© Pierre Folk
 

PROGRAMME
at 18h30:
PCA Talks with Steve Bisson: 'The Yellow Period of Van Gogh Was Actually a Lack of Blue?'

at 19h15:
EVA 8Experimental Video Architecture) video screenings curated by Filmessay

at 19h45:
Opening of photography group show 'Blurring the Lines' 

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PCA TALKS WITH STEVE BISSON
Steve Bisson is a Italo-belgian planner, art director, curator, working mainly in the field of urbanism and visual anthropology. Over the past 15 years he has played his professional practice as a form of experimental game by applying the visual arts in the context of the sustainable development. From the ten-year collection project of entrepreneurial memories in his home region plagued since 2008 by an increasing suicide rate due to the economic crisis, to the transformation of an artist residency of Sao Paulo in a shared laboratory for engaging the city housing issues during 2013 demonstrations. From the situationist approach used in the study of rural landscape conflicts commissioned by the Benetton Foundation, to various exhibitions dedicated to women in Russia during the incarceration of the Pussy Riot activists. As a craftsman, every project is tailor-made, taking into account the historical and social moment. In 2016, while being invited to curate the photography exhibition for the Italian pavillion of Biennale of Architecture, Bisson organized an off and free entry screening session about films on architecture to protest against the commodification of the city of Venice and the spectacularization of culture. Steve Bisson has collaborated worldwide with artists, companies, museums, foundations and galleries and contributed to over 40 exhibitions and festivals as an attempt to support young talents, create debate and increase awareness on human conditions across the world. For this Steve Bisson founded, respectively in 2009 and 2012, two online publishing projects Urbanautica and Filmessay to enhance deschooling and lifelong learning, involving dozens of people, from students to professors, curators and authors. Steve Bisson has so far both lectured and taught in several academies (IUAV, Ca’ Foscari and IED in Venice, Domus Academy Milan, FAAP and Universidade das Belas Artes in Sao Paulo among others). His essays and reviews appeared in many books, studies, magazines, and websites. Often seen as a jury member for photography awards and portfolio reviews he believes in conviviality as an antidote to postmodern loss of consciousness. This reading is intended to invite participants to reflect and dialogue on the ethics of looking and on the role of image production in shaping our cultural landscapes. 

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VIDEO SCREENINGS BY FILMESSAY
Filmessay will present a short selection of experimental videos taken from EVA a travelling festival on experimental architecture videos. Filmessay is video platform primarly dedicated to Art, that presents through festival and screening sessions the work of artists and video makers to a global audience of people who are passionate about arts and visual culture.

© Theo Tagholm, Simulacra, UK, 2015

Theo Tagholm: 'Symulacra'
Today abstraction is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror, or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being, or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal. The territory no longer precedes the map, nor does it survive it. It is nevertheless the map that precedes the territory – procession of simulacra – that engenders the territory, and if one must return to the fable, today it is the territory whose shreds slowly rot across the extent of the map. It is the real, and not the map, whose vestiges persist here and there in the deserts that are no longer those of the Empire, but ours. The desert of the real itself.” Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard.

Rob Carter: 'Sun City'
This work was created during an artist residency organized by ARTPORT_making waves. Rob Carter's video Metropolis was the winner of the second edition of Cool Stories for When the Planet gets Hot, a biennial competition for short films on climate change, issued by ARTPORT. This project was also made possible by the support of la Fundacion INSPIRARTE.

Katerina Athanasopoulou: 'Apodemy'
Plato likens the human soul with a cage, where knowledge is birds flying. We’re born with the cage empty and, as we grow, we collect birds and they go in the cage for future use. When we need to access knowledge we put our hand in the cage, hunt for a bird – and sometimes catch the wrong one. Ornithology uses the term “Zugunruhe” to describe the turbulent behaviour of birds before they migrate, whether free or caged. A flock of birds circles and moves a cage vehicle, seeking escape from a city half finished and abandoned, with roads interrupted by fragments of fallen statues. Those hands are simultaneously the pursuit of knowledge and also the heroes/leaders of the past that we have rejected but are still haunting us. As Europe seems to be imploding, this is my portrait of Athens.

© Katerina Athanasopoulou, 'Apodemy', Greece, 2012

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OPENING RECEPTION EXHIBITION 'BLURRING THE LINES'
Exhibition curated by Steve Bisson & Francois Ronsiaux
08.11.2016 - 20.11.206

The PCA Photo department is launching a new collaboration project with Urbanautica, Plateforme and London College of Fashion. The 'Blurring the lines' exhibition explores how the richness of possibilities of the photographic vocabulary is enhanced to the point of social and environmental awareness. The exhibit will be held at PCA during Paris Photo next November. Curators: Steve Bisson & Francois Ronsiaux.

The group show installation feature works by French artists and photographers:
Dominique Clerc
Vincent Debanne
Pierre Folk
Patrick Rimond

© Dominique Clerc from the series 'Paysages Interieurs'

Also feature a selections of student works from the University of Arts London, Paris College of Art and Berliner Technische Kunsthochschule:
Sasha Betzer
Lucy Black
Kovi Konowieki
Santtu Laine
Ingo Lawaczech
Otto Masters
Aurel Salzer
Camilla Storgaard
Ella Strowel
Roos Van de Kieft

© Lucy Black

© Sasha Betzer

«Is it actually possible to speak about only photography? Many artists/photographers could be considered as reality traficants, they use not only photography but the ensemble of technological possibilities to squeeze out their artistic concepts.» Francois Ronsiaux

«The expansion of the photographic language is a fascinating subject. The question theoretically relates to the split of the border between photography and image. It also affects the ways in which we understand pictures, discuss them, and share their content. It generates alternative spaces in which we can easily access images and experience diverse modes of interaction. In recent years various projects have shown how it is possible to expand the definition of photography in order to encompass practices distant from tradition. All this is in line with the prevalence of digital technology, in other words, the emphasis has been placed on the "how" rather than on the "what". The situation was well prophesied by many philosophers (like Nietzsche, Heidegger, Jaspers to name a few) and French theorists of postmodernism (from Debord to Baudrillard). If everything turns to be a spectacle of images or a traffic of reality, then the question to be addressed concerns the ethical implications of photography. With the exhibition 'Blurring the Lines', the richness of possibilities of the photographic vocabulary is enhanced as well to the point of social and environmental awareness.» Steve Bisson

© Vincent Debanne

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INFO
Auditorium, Room -101 
Paris College of Art hopes you will engage with us whether it’s in person or virtually. Please join us via live stream at www.stream.tv/channel/pca-talks Ask questions via Twitter @paris_edu #pcatalks

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LINKS
PCA Paris College of Art 
Filmessay