Leading institution: HEAD – Genève
Project leader: Pierre Leguillon
Project team: Mathias Pfund, Adélaïde Quenson, Ileana Parvu
Financing: HES -SO
Co-financing: HEAD – Genève
See the program
Conference of Ileana Parvu : "Ana Lupas au prisme des publications sur son oeuvre, de 1967 à 1996", November 20,2023
The research-creation project Zone grise de l'original (des bifaces aux NFT), directed by artist Pierre Leguillon, lecturer at HEAD – Geneve (HES-SO), articulates more than a dozen varied contributions (exhibitions, lectures, screenings, meetings, workshops, etc.) in several of Geneva's cultural institutions – but also in a café – between October 2023 and June 2024. They can be followed like a soap opera or a series.
With a team including artists, art historians, a lawyer and a prehistorian, we propose to survey the "grey zone of the original", a troubled space that has formed around the collection, conservation, restoration and exhibition of works of art, at least since the Middle Ages and after the archaeological discoveries of the 19th century linked to colonial empires. We have carried out fieldwork in various museums in Geneva, bearing in mind various recent legacies: that of modern art, that of the conceptual art of the 1970s, and that of what has been called "institutional criticism" since the 1980s.
We produce tailor-made exhibition forms and original narratives for works and artifacts whose particularity is, very often, that they cannot be shown to the public because of their dubious nature. We note that certain non-Western conceptions of art, digital technologies (3D printing, NFT, etc.), or even the evolution of law since the invention of photography, can enable us to shed light on this gray area.
In other words, how can we shift or redefine the institutional conception of the original and the forgery in the West, which has already been challenged since the beginning of the 20th century, at a time when works are circulating primarily in digital form, and always in a globalized context, whether artistic or not? Finally, if it's becoming increasingly difficult to find our way around deepfakes or Artificial Intelligence (AI) productions, should we still persist in basing the trade and reception of art on the postulate of originality?
Unless otherwise stated, access to these activities is free of charge. Other events may take place in 2024, and will be announced at a later date.