Uncool Memories #1.1
From 23 January to 14 March 2021
Les Tanneries – Amilly Contemporary Art Centre
Eight 2020 graduates at Orléans School of Art and Design exhibit their works showcased by Olivier Bouton: Jessy Asselineau, Théo Bonnet, Léa Fernandes, Basile Jesset, Lucie Laval, Chloé Lesseur, Antoine Souvent and Natacha Varez Herblot.
“ The first day of the rest of your life.” (October 1980)
Jean Baudrillard, Cool Memories 1980-1985, Vol. 1
Mid-March 2020. “ Due to the COVID-19 pandemic Orleans School of Art and Design was closed to students and the public from Monday 16 March for an unknown period of time” Mid-June 2020, the end of 5th year graduation took place based on, as it is said,an art file. After three months of distanced preparation, the diplomas featured PDF, Spark, Skype, Zoom, Classroom, Meet, WhatsApp, in other words Adobe, Microsoft, Google, Facebook. These were difficult tasks for students and teachers alike because, seemingly, there was nothing to see except for shared documents, videos or vidioconferencing.
23 June, the results were announced. The student projects were there, consistent, thought out, substantiated. But something was missing. Orléans ESAD is a school of art and design. After the lockdown, we needed to breathe, to create a call for works. Following an initial exhibition in September 2020 at the ESAD Gallery, the young designers released their works once again inside the glass-roofed Tanneries – Amilly Contemporary Art Centre.
These works are marked by the time, i.e. by networks, digital machines and the issues of ecological transition.
Grasping the play which is set between tangible space and networks, between forms and machines, production and environmental questions, the newly graduated designers reassert the need to think the position human beings, their bodies, words, writings, thoughts and objects hold.
Facing the challenges of a changing world, some look towards the cooperation between human and machine (Jessy Asselineau), generate contextualized ceramic objects (Léa Fernandes), and attempt to create differentiated communication content at the time of Instagram (Antoine Souvent) or simply demonstrate the digital transformation of social network images, so that they can also become an appropriable material by non-commercial fields such as research (Basile Jesset). Others, for their part, reflect on the relationship between writing and orality (Théo Bonnet) or our ways of communicating through images (Lucie Laval). Along with others who reassert the need to take care, paying attention to the way children perceive their own town (Chloé Lesseur) or arouse a new form of exploration of our bodies in contact with sensory and modular clothing (Natacha Varez Herblot).
Consistent with OrlÉans Art and Design School, the 2020 graduates are thus mobilized by the period, animated by a desire to act, if not already understand.
Emmanuel Guez, November 2020
Discover graduation projects exhibited.
Practical Information
Les Tanneries – Contemporary Art Centre
234 Rue des Ponts – 45200 Amilly
www.lestanneries.fr
facebook.com/lestanneriescac
T. : +33 (0)2.38.85.28.50