13th Lyon Biennale – Modern Life (paper catalogue + ebook)

Every biennale provides a visitor's guide – often a modest item, devised in advance of the exhibition – and a catalogue, which is often costly and intended for professionals only. All Biennale catalogues have a handicap, especially those featuring first-time exhibits: their images do not reflect the reality of the exhibits. What's more, the Biennale de Lyon produces up to 80% of the artworks that it shows. This is why we decided to disseminate our catalogue more widely, by offering a digital catalogue on the main digital distribution platforms, coupled with a paper catalogue that lets you download the digital catalogue. This digital version, in a bilingual (English and French) format, enables us to offer and disseminate plenty of information and content that paper cannot convey: interviews, videos, hypertext links, works in progress, commentaries, interventions by artists…
The purpose of the paper catalogue is to accompany the reader on their visit. This is why we have opted to downsize, so it also works as an exhibition guide. It offers a direct, immediate commentary on the exhibits of La vie moderne, and also includes artist interventions and information about the Biennale's other two exhibitions (Rendez-Vous 15 and Ce fabuleux monde moderne) and its two platforms (Veduta and Résonance). The digital catalogue will have three iterations, each of which can be downloaded: when the Biennale opens (critical articles, selected images, sundry information, multimedia content); during it (images of the whole exhibition, interviews with artists); and at the end (with images from Veduta and Résonance, etc.).