Le Dictateur n° 06

Le Dictateur a toujours été axé sur les images, sans texte. Ce dernier numéro est à l'opposé. Pas même une image, elles ont toutes été bannies, caviardées, réduites au noir, juste des textes. Les protagonistes sont 27 commissaires italiens et internationaux du monde de l'art, du design et de la mode, ainsi qu'un écrivain italien de renom. Ils ont été invités à organiser leur exposition idéale, avec des artistes passés, présents ou même futurs, mais sans utiliser d'images. Seulement des mots.

« Dear curator, in view of the upcoming publication of Le Dictateur No. 6, I am pleased to invite you to contribute to an issue that will, in its own way, make history. To understand its importance, a little background is needed: from 2006, year of Le Dictateur's first release to 2016, year of Le Dictateur's 10th anniversary, five issues were released. What do these five issues have in common? The complete absence of words. The sole presence of images. The next number of Le Dictateur, for the first time in its history, will be composed only of words. It won't have any image, but instead will host the most urgent of works: curation. Surrealists like to state that whoever dreams is a poet, Joseph Beuys like to say that we're all artists. A little too much for the utopia of aesthetic egalitarianism; perhaps it would be better to say that anyone who compiles today is a curator. Although curation promises a new form of intermediation, in the final analysis it is probably only administration, because in the end cultural products are packaged as already "curated" consumption. This curation is the perfect fit for a post-industrial economy in which our main task, if it isn't to be at its service, is to consume. So, when we curate, what do we actually produce? (Hal Foster) My request to you with this invitation is to curate the perfect exhibition. The one that exists in your mind. Your answer to the question: what meaning do I intend to produce? The wireframe of an exhibition. Its script. The book that hasn't yet been turned into a film. It will come to life and itself become a work on the pages of Le Dictateur. Whether it is anthological, retrospective, thematic, collective or site-specific. Whether it takes place on this planet or on Mars. Whether it considers living, dead or as yet unborn artists. Or whether it doesn't consider them at all. A project devised to push the boundaries of curatorial thought, reducing the exhibition to its pure noumenon. To the logos it was in the beginning. Pushing the limits of curation as far as thought, imagination and words can go. A total focus on the act of human curation, in the era in wichalgorithms compile the design of our experiences and our realisations. Le Dictateur for the first time in its history, will speak in your words. To host your exhibitions. »
Federico Pepe