Corinne Charpentier –
Director of the Art Centre (2002-2007)
(p. 23-29)
Etiquette can have some unexpected consequences: the story
goes that the old synagogue at Delme owes it to a "courtesy call" to
have had its destiny taking a very different direction from the one that
presided over its construction. Such at least are the terms recorded in
the minutes of the founding of the arts centre, the words of Alain Rérat,
then visual arts adviser at the Direction Régionale des Affaires Culturelles
(DRAC), responding to the mayor of Delme Roland Geis
(1), who had
turned to him for advice on an altogether different matter. The scheme
to turn the place into an arts centre was a fairly snap decision, backed
by the Drac at a time when State policy was firmly behind contemporary
creative art, and by a village with a population of 750 that had
already shown a keen taste for culture. After a while the Departmental
council bought the idea and so the art centre was able to develop.
This development remained low-key, even though the arts centre
achieved nationwide and international recognition of its activity, and
has since been able to set up an artists' residence a few kilometres
from the main venue. For all that, it is a remarkable place: exemplary for
its initiators' ambition and tenacity, for the commitment of the many
volunteers and teams that have followed one another, singular because
of the many ways in which it continues to resonate with history, original
because of its architecture. But maybe most of all, it is the harmony
of its volumes, the simplicity of its lines rebuilt in the post-war years, the
outstanding quality of the light streaming in through so many windows,
that rightly guided our visual arts adviser's intuition.
It is a much-awaited moment in an arts centre's history when it
brings out a publication documenting its past activity. At the same time,
apart from its most obvious purpose, the promotion of the institution orchestrated by the institution itself, one may doubt the usefulness of
such an initiative. For fifteen years, the synagogue de Delme preferred
to ask artists to come up with a project specially designed for this particular
venue. This was back in the early nineties, apparently a particularly
favourable period for site-specific work; however, fifteen years on,
it seems that placing the emphasis so heavily on the context is no longer
the done thing, which probably has something to do with the logic of the
marketplace, one bent on supporting the circulation of works through
commercial networks. Most of the works – especially in the early years –
were destroyed, being so closely tied in with the host site. They had to
be interpreted through the venue or existed only in that place. Therein
lies one of the most obvious reason for producing this book, i.e. purely
and simply to document these destroyed projects.
But rather than a chronology, rather than just documentation, the
book has been designed as a handbook presenting a set of assumptions
that have been tested in this unique place, an array of viewpoints
to be remembered and also those to come. In addition to the works
that have been produced, this book will also document the dialogues
that have been entered into with the place, fusion and utter indifference
being possible methods actually tried.
Thus the writings of the artists featured in this book set out
stances that are singular, sometimes antagonistic, and they appear in
different sections of the book. Part One attempts to restore and bring
together in pictures offerings that echoed each other, without claiming
to explain in so many words the mechanics and effects of this juxtaposition
of images, punctuated and informed by artists' statements.
This "picture book" is a substitute for the visual, sensory, physical experiences
we get in exhibition mode. It is no more than an ersatz and an
evocation. A set of inadequate clues.
The essays by Jeff Rian and Julien Fronsacq situate the venue
and its activity with a history of recent works and exhibitions, placing
the art centre on the professional scene, with its customs, its reflexes
and its evolution. A historical section rounds off the book: the history
of this synagogue, its architectural style and the community behind it
all, written by Philippe Hoch, followed by a fairly exhaustive chronology
(2)
of exhibitions held over the last fifteen years.
(...)
Finally, if this book were to be cut down to just two pages, the
two standpoints of
Daniel Buren and
Roman Opalka would be reproduced
on their own, as they illustrate so well two antagonistic approaches that
have cropped up with varying intensity at the different exhibitions. And
if we had to settle for just one picture – fortunately, with a book like this
we can do better than that – we should probably have to choose a view
of the upper floor of the
Peter Downsbrough project: one word, written
vertically on either side of the rostrum but upwards, and cut in two
lengthwise: the word "and". Because we have simultaneously to make
do
with and allow ourselves to do
without. To devise a programme
bearing in mind the singular history, the collective history which might
readily be capitalized, to be willing to move away from it or latch onto
it depending on the circumstance, and surprise ourselves by coming
back to it when we thought we had got away from it.
On the outside, the Moorish architectural style shows the influence
of nearby Germany, which during the 19th century saw many synagogues
built along the same lines, notably the great synagogue in
Berlin. The architecture seems to be the sign of a distant origin, out of
keeping with its surroundings; it should be recalled however that the
feeling of strangeness we associate with this type of architecture was
in its day shared by many Jews. Apart from the clue to the general 19th
century taste for orientalism, there is in this architecture the sign of a
claim to be different, and a striking fact is probably how ostentatiously this is advertised, leading us to think by the way about what is becoming
of similar architectural projects in villages with the same qualities,
in our own day – but this is probably off topic here. The synagogue de
Delme is not on the edge of the village, on the contrary it is right in the
middle, just next to the old law courts, now the Town Hall. The building
pervades the village's identity without in any way characterizing its overall
reality. It is a kind of assimilated
alien, a emblematized, asserted,
advertised difference.
It is a fate of history that this building with its eastern splendours,
including an impressive cupola should have been destroyed, dynamited
it seems towards the end of the Second World War. War damage
funds were set aside for reconstruction but the old cupola proved too
costly to rebuild. Owing to its slightly flattened round shape, the dome
that now tops the building some call an "English helmet" (there are
plenty of references to the war in this part of the world). The archives
for the period before the destruction are few and far between. As for
the architecture, all we know is that the interior was redrawn on more
austere lines.
Once you get over the strange feeling from the outside view
(3),
you come to the odd scene of complete floor-to-ceiling whiteness. This
looks like a heavy-handed attempt at emphasizing the place's new calling,
with white de rigueur, pretending to a neutrality that no longer
deceives anyone. The surfaces fit in with this colour scheme that is
now rather old
(4); what remains of the place of worship are the dome,
the balcony formerly reserved for the womenfolk (who, in addition to
this raised view, also had their own entrance), the rostrum, some huge
pillars and thin ornamented columns, on either side of the main doors
on the ground floor. At the back of the rostrum stands the stone arch
surrounding the cabinet (at present concealed) designed to hold the
Torah, this arch being surmounted by an oculus in the shape of a star
of David that clearly proclaims the building's erstwhile function. Finally,
numerous windows survive in a variety of geometrical patterns that
served as a source for the graphic identity of the place
(5). The daylight
streams in, and combined with so much whiteness, tends to heighten
the Moorish character of the place and mentally take us miles away
from the Lorraine countryside.
The site is always inevitable, it is the framework of the work, its
boundary. If this book only manages very imperfectly to restore the
works that have occupied this old synagogue, it will perhaps better succeed
in providing food for thought on experiencing this boundary, by
attempting to explain the nature of the relationship that artists have
entered into with this building.
Many guest artists' works have resonated with History. The first
programming period
(6) saw recurring motifs, one such being the multitude:
whether it be
Jean-Marc Bustamante's marble pebbles, a voice
reciting a succession of numbers (
Roman Opalka) or
Tadashi Kawamata's
chairs, these multiplied presences in such a context inevitably
make one think of the dark hours of humanity. Other interventions have
sought a more direct link to these evocations (Iris Sara Schiller,
Muntadas) or proposed various thoughts on religion or belonging to various
communities.
When I arrived to take over in charge of this art centre, an
Ann Veronica Janssens exhibition was just ending. This was the "smoke
sculpture", which filled the space with a fog that blocked the view, slowing
down visual perceptions and bodily movements, as if the better to
force them. The setting lent itself perfectly to the presentation of this
work, but I was struck by one comment left by a visitor. I forget the
exact words, but the meaning was clearly indignation at the presence
of fog – or smoke – in this former synagogue, as if to emphasize the
artist's tactlessness. A few months later, another visitor counted the
colours in a work by
Stéphane Dafflon and found they came to the same
number as the tribes of Israel. So interpreting against the yardstick of
history is not always the result of the artist's intentions, and the site
seems to be regularly catching out visitors' perceptions in this trap.
This is probably what
Daniel Buren is driving at when he
describes himself as "mistrusting as far as possible the place's original
calling";
Buren adds that this disused synagogue is "an empty place
where everything is possible". To privilege the "here and now" seems
to be a position that follows naturally from what an art centre is called
upon to do and it seems all the more a necessity for a place like this.
Such a position is a form of optimism, emphasizing the present without
drawing a veil over the past for all that. The programme from 2002 to 2007 focused on issues relating to the state of awareness and forms
of perception, as if to echo this mistrust, the better to foster a new
awareness as to the nature of perception.
Thus the
Surfaces de projections exhibition proposed to take a
look at the active relationship between the work and the visitor
(7), like
this white painting by
Rémy Zaugg containing just two words that could
barely be made out: tableau aveugle (blind picture). The question of
active participation has been addressed on a number of occasions; in
the construction set by Paul Cox testing the laws of physics, visitors'
intentions (or lack thereof), as in
Dan Walsh's offering. This artist, who
might be succinctly described as an abstract painter, put the site to
remarkable use, which was easily guessed to have been dedicated to
an orator and his oratory. Focusing on the rostrum as a speaker's corner,
Dan Walsh proposed a rather serious approach to the ways in which
painting and more generally information is perceived. The whole thing
was combined with a playful intervention which likened the old synagogue
to a sporting arena, where visitors/the former faithful were the
players in a game with no set rules.
Dan Walsh's intervention stood apart from many earlier offerings
by preferring the physical scale of the individual to that of the architecture,
which comes as no surprise if we consider this artist's paintings.
To that extent, this offering can be linked with that of
Marc Camille Chaimowicz, who in a very different register, explored the question of
subjectivity in the heart of a place so heavily burdened with its collective
history. It was a subtle mix of biographical elements, closely linked
to a personal history, and the presence of birds, which gently brought
us back to our own presence in the here and now. The link with the
venue, a community and its past was at once decontaminated and reactivated
in a completely different way, not foreign to this past but offering
a more subjective reading of it. Like some newfound freedom, an
attempt to escape from the weight of history.
1. In 1991.
2. Three exhibitions which occasioned the production of no new works have been set aside:
Chroniques ludiques, Frac Lorraine collection (L. Krims - S. Skoglund - S. Hughes - W. Wegman -
C. Boltanski - X. Veilhan - Fischli & Weiss - from 28/06/1996 to 13/10/1996); "Pièces à conviction",
Herve Bize private collection (S. Antoine, Arman, J-P. Bertrand, B. Burkhard, B. Borgeaud,
B. Carbonnet, R. Combas, R. Dall'Aglio, M. Dector et M. Dupuy, D. Dezeuze, G. Gasiorowski,
P. Gauthier, J-C. Loubières, F. Morellet, C. Nanney, P. Rösel, E. Saulnier, Ernest T., Taroop & Glabel,
B. Vautier, C. Viallat, A. Warhol - from 06/02/2000 to 12/03/2000; Surfaces de projections, works
taken from various private and public collections (A.V. Janssens - P. Chang - F. Gonzalez Torres –
D. Graham - W. Jacob - J. Kosuth - R. Zaugg - from 29/06/2002 to 29/09/2002).
3. On a visit for a project to lay out the approaches, Mathieu Mercier for a moment took it for an
observatory, which is not far off the mark…
4. The reader is referred to Jeff Rian's essay on this subject, p. 99 to 109.
5. Created in 2003 by Rik Bas Backer and José Albergaria.
6. Who was led by a trio, Hélène Decelle, Olivier Kamoun, Nicolas Schneider – then Olivier Kamoun
only, appointed director in 1998.
7. June to September 2002.
