Through the institutional permaculture project developed since 2022 lies the notion of “zoning”, which proposes a reasoned use of the institution’s space and time. Thus, from June 2023, a space at the Palais de Tokyo will be transformed into a “friche”, i.e. a collective place for work, reflection, production, meetings and lulls for artists, collectives, researchers and magazines. This place provides them spaces, an intellectual environment and working conditions. La Friche meets a dual need, for artists and for the establishment. As part of an ecosystem, it organically and “naturally” nourishes the institution, stimulates its thinking and projects, and contributes to its day-to-day dynamism.

With : Mouhawalat Collective, Aung Ko, Nge Lay, Agnė Jokšė, Anastasia Sosunova

Coordinator : Coline Davenne

From March 12 to June 12, 2024, La Friche du Palais de Tokyo invites five artists and collectives to live and work in the spaces. In direct connection with the spring 2024 exhibition season, and particularly the “Dislocations” project, in partnership with the Portes Ouvertes sur l’art association, La Friche welcomes artists Nge Lay and Aung Ko, who left Myanmar after the 2021 coup d’état. In preparation for the group exhibition project led by Emilie Villez and Neringa Bumblienė, which will take place as part of Lithuania’s cultural season in France in autumn 2024, la Friche also invites Agnė Jokšė and Anastasia Sosunova for a production residency that will give rise to in situ works for the exhibition. Finally, the Mouhawalat collective has been invited to continue its “Morshed” project, which aims to collect intergenerational transmission tools for young artists.

 

Conceived as a place of welcome, La Friche crosses invitations to give time and space to creators, in direct contact with the institution, its programming and its concerns.

With : Linga Acácio, Phoenix Atala, Jimmy Beauquesne, Aurélien Potier, Jeanne Jacob, Tony Colombe. K, Rafael Moreno, Rafael RG, Myriam Ziehli, ana•mona servo / Les Éditions PanPan CulCul and their guests.

The initial definition of the Friche is deliberately minimal, allowing it to take on a wide variety of formats depending on the projects, opportunities, inspirations and needs identified by the institution. It’s a time-space set aside at the heart of the exhibition spaces, which reconnects with the multiple functions of art and goes beyond the traditional uses and missions of an institution. It’s a space where artists are free to work, to come and go, to invite other professionals, and which will be open to the public on an ad hoc basis for special events to preserve time for individual or collective work.

The specificity of this first Friche is to be particularly editorialized around the exhibition project Hors de la nuit des normes (out of the enormous boredom) which will take place in the same space and will be its extension. This exhibition, curated by Valentina D’Avenia and Clément Raveu, will run from October 19, 2023 to January 7, 2024.

For there to be life, things have to contaminate and transform themselves through contact with one another. With this in mind, La Friche becomes the ideal testing ground for a variety of mutually enriching yet complementary practices. In the same way, it inspires and feeds the institution’s reflections, in a logic of attention and consideration for each person’s own vulnerabilities. This collective movement begins with simple questions: how can we take care of our bodies and our networks of affection? How can we work not just on love, but also with it? How do we translate non-standard desires and romanticisms? What genealogies can be written through the prism of situated gazes?

Resolutely dissonant, this second instalment will bring together artists from the past and present from La Friche, archives and works of art and delightful encounters, in a spirit of irreverence and wit, commitment and solidarity. From contingent love to romantic friendship, from trans-pedigree and queer culture to transnational approaches, from methods introduced by LGBTQIA+ ancestralities to contemporary adelphity, these sensitive and subversive insights into the normativity of relationships lead us to reconsider the histories that have eluded us, and thus act on the present.