November 17th – December 3rd
Montpellier-based art collective Aperto: Pierre Bellemin, Didier Casiglio, Emmanuelle Etienne, Agnès Fornells, Christelle Grandon, Alain Lapierre, Nicolas Lebrun and Michel Martin
The project “… on porosity” revolves around an international exchange between actors in the field of contemporary art from Montpellier in France and Belgrade in Serbia. These events aim to bring together different spheres of the contemporary art field, whether non-profit or institutional. This project takes form through exhibitions and lectures in Belgrade and Montpellier.
A first series of exhibitions (… on porosity I and II) took place in Belgrade in November 2016 at U10 Art Space and Podroom gallery at Belgrade Cultural Centre. During this first phase, twenty-four artists, teachers and art students from Montpellier and the Occitanie region were invited to exhibit their works in the Belgrade galleries. During the second phase, the works of artists living and working in Serbia will be presented at Aperto and ESBAMA galleries in Montpellier in December 2017.
The artistic director of the Cluster-101 association and curator, Milan Tutunović, is the initiator of these events. For this project, he proposes a reflection on the concept of porosity as the driving force. As a metaphor for dialogue and artistic exchanges between Belgrade and Montpellier, it resonates as a phenomenon linked to passages and fluctuations. The afore-mentioned reflection is developed from the works of Walter Benjamin, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. This multifaceted notion can be activated in a variety of domains and perspectives. The project is built through reciprocity amidst the structures, galleries and other venues, thus allowing the development of cross-proposals with singular and diversified approaches. The intersections between associations, institutions or art schools question contemporary artistic practices in these two countries. This is not a question of comparison between the two countries, but an invitation to dialogue and exchange.
“The reflection carried out in this text is a sort of arboreal extension of the thoughts of Deleuze/Guattari and Benjamin about the notion of porosity. It is not a question of according these two approaches, but rather of establishing mutual oppositions. Indeed, these thinkers conceive the notion of porosity in different dimensions. For Deleuze/Guattari, porosity is a matter of surface, flat as the skin, two-dimensional. For Benjamin, it is like the Neapolitan volcanic rock, three-dimensional, solid, but pierced with holes and spongy. For Deleuze/Guattari, the pore is at the origin of the fraction of the opposites, whereas Benjamin sees the complementarity there of the opposites.”
Excerpt from the text “… on porosity” by Milan Tutunović.
Partners: Aperto gallery – Montpelier, Podroom gallery – Belgrade Cultural Centre, U10 Art Space – Belgrade, Faculty of Fine Arts Belgrade, École Supérieure des Beaux Arts Montpellier – ESBAMA
Support: City of Belgrade, Ministry of Culture and Information of the Republic of Serbia, Region of Occitania, City of Montpelier and Regional Directorate of Cultural Affairs (DRAC-Occitanie)
Photo: Agnès Fornells