Art, Climates and Environmentalism
FIAC and the Fondation d’entreprise Ricard present the tenth edition of the Cinéphémère, an artist’s film programme screened during FIAC week in a 14-seat nomad movie theatre on the Avenue Winston Churchill. The programme conceived by curator Thomas Boutoux, traces a history of contemporary artists’ awareness of environmental problems, the evolution of climate conditions, and the transformation and alteration of ecosystems.
“While the general awareness of the ecological crisis has never been as high as it is today, environmentalism in art is by no means a new idea. The assumption that it has become a fashionable theme lately, or even an opportunistic position among artists, not only equates to playing into the hand of climate scepticism, but it also prevents any serious consideration of the various artistic practices, languages, and experiences that for decades have observed, thought, and inhabited the ongoing environmental transformations and disasters.
The programme of artist’s films at the Cinéphémère seeks, on the contrary, to compose and investigate a history of the artistic sensitivity to and awareness of environmental issues over the course of the past three decades. It cannot claim to be exhaus-tive, given the abundance of productions by contemporary artists and filmmakers addressing the upheavals of the ecological dynamics of our age. It chooses to focus instead on artists who have made the question of affects central to their work. Film is unquestionably the preferred medium for an artistic approach to environmental issues, given the prominence and role it gives to landscapes and “climates”, to the living world, its actors – human and non-human – and to narrative forms. The conditions of production inherent to artist’s films – deliberately removed from the norms of the film industry, their specific modes of distribution, dissemination, and installation also lead many contemporary artists to enact their environmental commitment via this medium.”
Thomas Boutoux is an author and exhibition curator, editor and teacher. After co-founding and co-directing the independent space castillo/corrales (2007–2015), he is now one of the members of Paraguay, an independent, cooperative publishing house founded in Paris in 2009. He teaches the history of ideas and contemporary art at the School of Fine Arts in Bordeaux. Over the last five years, he has organized exhibitions and special projects for the Fondation d’entreprise Ricard and its editorial platform TextWork. For the Fondation, he now conducts research on the dialogue between art, science and activism.
FIAC 2019 – CINÉPHÉMÈRE
From Wednesday 16th to Sunday, October 20th from noon to 8pm. Registration at the entrance.
