EXHIBITION

The Vanishing Point of History

Centre d’art et photographie, Lectoure, Midi-Pyrenees, Lectoure, 07/18/2016 - 08/23/2016

8 Cours Gambetta, 32700 Lectoure

ABOUT

The Vanishing Point of History a Group exhibition curated by Catsou Roberts.

"The past carries with it a temporal index by which it is referred to redemption. There is a secret agreement between past generations and the present one".  Walter Benjamin,

Theses on the Philosophy of History According to Walter Benjamin, the vanishing point of history doesn't reside in a distant past, but rather in the present. He describes this vanishing point of history as always being the present moment, which is a reversal of the conventional notion of history receding somewhere behind us, as if disappearing into a nonexistent time. Many of the artworks in L’Été photographique revisit historical events in order to consider what is occurring now. This interest in history and historiography emanates from a desire to understand the present and find meaning within it. Socially engaged artists trying to make sense of the present, will turn to the past.

They know that by understanding history, we might be better able to change the future. Like Benjamin’s view of the historian, many contemporary artists “grasps the constellation which his own era has formed with a definite earlier one. Thus he establishes a conception of the present as the time of the now” in an attempt to consider current issues and realities. L’Été photographique brings together several international artists who investigate history and its representations. In doing so, they force us to confront history as a construction, interspersed with absences and omissions. Artists in the exhibition take as their raw material particular historical events, activities and figures that have been eclipsed, hidden or forgotten over time.

Themes of stealth, neglect and obfuscation run throughout the exhibition. All the works are united by a shared interest in episodes, figures or objects that have been lost, suppressed or overshadowed. Visitors to the exhibition will encounter abandoned houses; stranded marines; a plant driven into extinction; fictitious war machines; clandestine activities; unsung heroes; a stolen cloak; lost transcripts; unidentifiable images; secret editorial tactics; an unmade film, vanished manuscripts and a whole host of other stories from the past. Many artists in the exhibition draw on found images and archival material, while others invent new visual vocabularies to analyse the past. All the works are based on extensive research and an engagement with history.

Offering bold insights, these works are poetic, often humorous, and always ladened with meaning. L’Été photographique includes still photography as well as moving images—projected, on monitors, and even in virtual reality googles. At the same time, the exhibition includes sculpture, installations and sound work, showing a range of lens-based art, and providing a rich and varied experience for the viewer. The project unfolds across several venues in Lectoure, offering visitors the double pleasure of discovering architecture as well as art. These different sites are as diverse as the works : from an ancient stone cottage, a 16th century episcopal palace, classrooms of a children’s school, a cavernous colonnaded market hall, to the art centre itself housed in a 19th century chaplaincy.

Catsou Roberts

With works by APT artists Uriel Orlow, Ra di Martino, Hans Rosenstrom, Marco Poloni and Matthew Buckingham, Joachim Koester, Lina Selander, Bertille Bak, Eric Baudelaire, Melik Ohanian, Larry Achiampong, and others

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