Cosmograms is conceived as an extension of Melik Ohanian's film Seven Minutes Before (2004), a cinematic allegory of both the exhaustion of a certain narrative form and the new privilege accorded to space over time. Collecting twenty-three texts by authors from diverse fields of investigation and research, Cosmograms attempts to map the multiple coordinates of this new spatial paradigm.
In his conversation with the editors, the philosopher Peter Sloterdijk claims that “we are now living an epoch in which a more or less satisfied and luxurious conscience is learning the art of arranging its space. Modern man is a sort of ‘curator' ... which is to say, an exhibition planner of the space that he himself inhabits. Every man has become a museum curator. We could say that installation art is the common meta-profession that everyone is obliged to practice. The innocence of the traditional habitat is lost for good.”
Contributions by Cecil Balmond,
Gilles Clément,
Beatriz Colomina, Tacita Dean, Richard Drayton, David Elbaz, Patricia Falguières, Medard Gabel, André Gaudreault, Paul Gilroy,
Édouard Glissant, Anna Halprin, David Held, Pekka Himanen, Bruno Latour, Charles Musser,
Jean-Luc Nancy, Jane Poynter, Jean-Christophe Royoux, Saskia Sassen, Peter Sloterdijk, John Tresch, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro and Robert Whitman.
Born in 1969, Melik Ohanian lives and works between Paris and New York.
