Companion book to a project by the artists Annie Vigier and Franck Apertet (les gens d'Uterpan), which emanates from the analysis of individual or collective attitudes and behaviors produced in the public space of a given city.
Uchronia is a project initiated by the artists Annie Vigier and Franck Apertet (les gens d'Uterpan) in 2014, which emanates from the analysis of individual or collective attitudes and behaviors produced in the public space of a given city. The word uchronia, used among others by the French philosopher Charles Renouvier in his book Uchronie, l'utopie dans l'histoire (1876), means “non-time,” that is, a time that doesn't exist.
In response to the increasing transformation of public spaces into functional areas toward which individuals are guided to fulfill a given activity, the two artists call upon citizens to become uchronists, to infiltrate public life with physical modules coming from daily behaviors, synchronized and adjusted according to the context. Contrary to flash mobs or performances, these actions don't address spectators. Passerby are accidentally witnesses, attentive or not, of these presences and gestures that maintain the formal appearance of normality.
More than a comment on the Uchronia project, this publication is thought of as a collective uchronia that infiltrates the book as space of publication, as a public space. According to the protocol proposed by the artists and by the art historian Emanuele Quinz, the contributors have freely occupied different sections of the book (the table of contents, introduction, chapter, illustrations, notes, appendices, etc.). Each section may be illustrated several times, or not at all.
The work of Annie Vigier and Franck Apertet (les gens d'Uterpan) questions the norms and conventions that govern exhibitions and the live arts. Relying on the mechanisms of adjustment of the individual, the body and creation to these contexts, the artists create a critical work based on the choreographers' initial practice.
In a methodic manner, their reflection takes place through the displacement and recontextualisation of the processes of action and monstration that belong to the field of fine and live arts. They include in their work the parameters of approach, communication and archiving as well as the economic dimension and the institutional situation of its production. They process each step that constitutes the practice of an artist and make responsible the visitors, sponsors and institutions in their work.
