This catalogue is an extension of a series of exhibitions featured at Gallery La Box, in Bourges. Each invited artist produced a site-specific intervention which tried to answer the question: Can the artists help us living together?
“Colocation” is a series of six exhibitions curated by Elena Yaichnikova and Nicolas Audureau. The starting point for the programme was a series of invitations to artists to create projects specifically for La Box, the Gallery of ENSA Bourges. Each contribution is integrated into the La Box space and the economic and social context of the city of Bourges, and raises various questions about the nature of artistic actions: the artist's civic and ethical responsibility, reassessment of issues according to context, and place of a specific research in art. Plus, ultimately, the need for coexistence based on the sharing of resources.
Implicitly or explicitly the invited artists assume a kind of responsibility, a “real” commitment to “real” life, considering that current social and political issues call for an ethical stance on the part of citizens in general and artists in particular. But does art have to take on this responsibility? Interventionist artists face the paradox while positioning themselves between utopianism and effectiveness. How does art manage to combine the efficacy with its specific discursive qualities? So, can art and artists help us to live together? And do they have to try?
