The exhibition The Cynics Republic happened throughout three weeks on the Palais de Tokyo in November 2024. In the course of the exhibition, curator and author Pierre Bal-Blanc introduced a sequence of dematerialized works (scores, directions, movies, and sound items) based mostly on a “rating,” which he shared with the general public. The Cynics Republic gives an expertise—each tangible and ephemeral—that questions the singularity of the viewer’s encounter with house, the materiality of objects, and the our bodies of performers. The time period “Republic” refers to governance as a central theme. As Bal-Blanc factors out, all the most important philosophers of antiquity proposed their very own “Republic” within the type of a theoretical mannequin offering directions on how one can govern. Within the case of the exhibition, governance refers back to the methods during which the relationships between artists, the viewers, the museum’s employees, and the museum itself are organized and administered. A brand new model of the exhibition was introduced on the Museum of Fashionable Artwork in Warsaw from Could 10 to June 8, 2025, below the title The Cynics Republic – Plac Defilad. Within the following interview, Bal-Blanc discusses his analysis and expertise curating efficiency artwork and explains how The Cynics Republic pursues a counter-history of efficiency, one which raises well timed political questions.
VANESSA DESCLAUX
The Cynics Republic looks like a continuation of different initiatives you’ve finished that discover vital pondering and in-depth analysis within the discipline of efficiency artwork. This time you’re focusing extra particularly on writing a “counter-history of efficiency.”
PIERRE BAL-BLANC
Certainly, The Cynics Republic is a continuation of the Residing Forex exhibition sequence1 that I started in 2005, which consisted in presenting efficiency works—each concurrently and successively—whose directions have been both reactivated on quite a few events or created particularly for a specific occasion. This manner of presenting efficiency broke radically with what had been finished earlier than: performances programmed inside a particular venue and at a specific time. Furthermore, it was a collective endeavor in collaboration with the artists, which decided the timing and frequency of the works as they got here and went, typically carried out by others. The objective was to just accept mobility and the interference of sound all through the house. Creating these strategies allowed for the opening of an area of immanence during which experience continuously oscillates and the place passive and lively roles are regularly inverted. That’s why I don’t current myself as an artist, however fairly as a curator a author or an essayist—on condition that tradition assigns roles by default, very like choosing a format in a software program program. Every work introduced within the Residing Forex sequence was carried out in its integrality and recognized with its creator; but, proven collectively, they have been enriched by this modification of perspective. The reference to Pierre Klossowski’s La monnaie vivante (Residing Forex) already supplied a response to the connection between the historical past of efficiency artwork, and the historical past of economic system and labor—a hyperlink that was both lacking or barely addressed in different initiatives from the identical interval that additionally sought to revisit the historicity and presentation of efficiency artwork (equivalent to New York’s Performa pageant, which additionally started in 2005, or Il Tempo del Postino in Manchester in 2007).
VANESSA
How did this strategy take form over time? What have been among the key steps alongside the best way?
PIERRE
The Cynics Republic explores this query additional by drawing on the founding act of historical Cynicism: the counterfeiting of cash by Diogenes of Sinope, which led to his exile in Corinth and later Athens. In response to Marie-Odile Goulet-Cazé, a number one scholar on Historical Cynicism, counterfeiting, as practiced by Diogenes and/or his father, resulted within the philosophy of Cynicism changing into recognized with a radical “recasting” of customs and values. Counterfeiting thus paradoxically assured the authenticity of philosophy as a apply. By counterfeiting cash, Diogenes challenges us to see these issues historically perceived as destructive—exile, slavery, poverty, and so forth.—in a brand new mild. Revisiting historical Cynicism helps higher perceive up to date types of efficiency artwork, particularly when contemplating their temporal dynamics and spatial context. It additionally highlights how efficiency typically resists a disembodied rhetoric—one which separates thoughts and physique and continues to form artwork historical past, significantly when the historical past of efficiency is seen soley from the attitude of Dada or Futurism.
VANESSA
You’ve developed a particular, site-specific curatorial apply that affirms its authorship but, on the similar time, challenges the dominant picture of the curator as an entrepreneur working inside a neoliberal system based mostly on the appropriation of sources and their capitalist exploitation. Are you able to elaborate in your place and the way you identify and describe your apply?
PIERRE
The customer to an exhibition is now not a passive spectator, however extra like a node in a sequence of occasions—each receiving and producing them concurrently and successively. The shift within the twenty-first century from an aesthetics of manufacturing to an aesthetics of reception has led to the demise of conventional roles such because the museum curator, artist, critic, connoisseur. Even establishments like museums and galleries have grow to be outdated. They’re being changed by new figures of authority formed by practices equivalent to these of the unbiased curator, activist, educator, producer—and by new areas like artwork gala’s, biennials, and foundations. Every of those play an essential half in revealing how energy operates within the artwork world. By putting larger significance on reception, the objective isn’t to interchange one’s perspective—such because the artist’s —with the curator’s or the viewer’s, however fairly to acknowledge that a complete vary of viewpoints may be equally legitimate in shaping a pluralistic axiology or worth system. This stands in distinction to a supposedly impartial axiology. In brief, the work doesn’t promote an aesthetics of manufacturing that encourages appropriation and exploitation, however fairly an ethics of reception that requires attentiveness and transmission.
VANESSA
In referring to historical Cynicism, it appears to me you’re pointing to one thing that’s been central to your apply for fairly some time—your personal presence within the exhibition. Would you describe your apply as performative? You may, in actual fact, be the one one to completely expertise this continuously shifting exhibition, which is made up principally of actions, gestures, and fleeting interactions. How does your presence present itself in an exhibition the place you’re, in some ways, the primary viewer? And when it comes to your apply, what position does the entity Jeff Wall Manufacturing play? How does Pierre Bal-Blanc’s curatorial apply intersect with the creative apply of Jeff Wall Manufacturing? Is that distinction even related?
PIERRE
My first public artwork intervention was for a gaggle exhibition titled Cinq être humains exposent (5 Human Beings Exhibit) in 1988 in Lyon.2 My contribution consisted of 4 photocopies mounted on the wall of a small exhibition house on the rue d’Algérie. They have been supplied at no cost to guests within the type of a vital essay on Jeff Wall’s exhibition, then exhibiting on the Nouveau Musée in Villeurbanne (now the IAC). The title of the group exhibition deliberately separated the roles of artist, curator, and critic, inviting the general public to replicate on them independently—to strategy the person with no label. The textual content I wrote, titled “Jeff Wall,” wasn’t signed and was additionally mailed anonymously to numerous individuals within the artwork world. Solely the printed invitation card—both out there within the gallery or despatched individually—recognized the participant on the again. By focusing with reference to the textual content itself (Jeff Wall), and giving minimal visibility to the creator (restricted to the gallery), my work proposed a fluid, evolving id—one formed by what an individual does, not by a hard and fast position. Over time, the topic of the essay, Jeff Wall, morphed into Jeff Wall Manufacturing, the identify I might use for future initiatives as an creator. That first motion, which I did exterior my research whereas I used to be nonetheless a scholar on the École des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, ran counter to the concept that human beings have a necessary nature outlined upfront. As an alternative, it claimed that individuals come into being and form their id by what they do. By fairly actually changing into the topic of my very own vital textual content—after which turning that topic right into a kind of emblem or label for my future work—I used to be intuitively taking part in with concepts of transformation and redefinition. That strategy attracts from a number of key influences: Spinoza’s determinism, which invitations us to know and embrace the forces that form us; Deleuze’s thought of steady, fluid, and unstable changing into; and Diogenes’s radical critique of social values as a method to pursue a extra genuine life. My use of Jeff Wall Productionalso echoes how Croatian (previously Yugoslav) experimental filmmaker Tomislav Gotovac—whose retrospective I curated—makes use of the identify of American jazz bandleader Glenn Miller because the manufacturing identify for his movies. In Gotovac’s work, Glenn Miller represents greater than a reputation—it symbolizes a stress between the formal rigor and improvisation of jazz that he applies to his filmmaking.
The usage of Jeff Wall Manufacturing as a type of accreditation (or scoring course of) updates earlier methods of creative appropriation, establishing a dialog with artists like Mutlu Çerkez, a Turkish-Cypriot Australian artist I just lately wrote about, and the American artist STURTEVANT, with whom I’ve labored up to now. Çerkez approaches the apply of “bootlegging” as a type of forgery—however one which isn’t totally destructive. Within the spirit of Diogenes, he too proposes a brand new set of values. Just like the counterfeiter from Sinope, Çerkez creates a brand new forex by defacing the effigy on current cash (Untitled 29220 (16 September 2044), 1989) or by placing works into circulation based mostly on different artworks. Starting within the Nineteen Sixties, Elaine Sturtevant undertook an analogous ascetic train, turning her personal identify right into a model: STURTEVANT. If I’ve chosen to not current myself as an artist—and as a substitute to imagine the institutional position which the tradition trade sometimes assigns by default (the commissaire or curator), I’ve finished in order a performative act when it comes to my very own visibility. That doesn’t imply I’m not an creator—in actual fact, I simply did a present at Scorching Wheels Gallery in London that explores that very thought: The Jeff Wall Assortment (On Sale).3
VANESSA
You increase the query of shared sources—or issues being held in frequent—by drawing a parallel between the fragments you’ve gathered out of your analysis on historical Cynicism (a philosophical custom handed down by spoken phrase and bodily actions), on the one hand, and, on the opposite, dematerialized artworks (protocols, scores, movies, sound items, and so forth.) from two collections—one public and the opposite personal: the CNAP Centre nationwide des arts plastiques in Paris and the Kontakt Assortment in Vienna. You revisit these works by the lens of Cynical thought, putting them in an surprising lineage going again to antiquity. How does this narrative invite us to rethink what a set is, and what the position of the museum as an establishment is likely to be?
PIERRE
The fragments of historical Greek Cynicism that we all know right this moment have come right down to us by the collections and translations of eighth-century Arabic philosophers, after being filtered by Christianity and the Byzantine Empire. Given the dearth of major sources, we have now to deal with them as copies of copies, altered over time. Similar to the kōans in Chinese language Taoism, it’s inconceivable to attribute them to a particular creator. As writings, they’re the results of a collective effort. The Cynics Republic contrasts these historical sources—each Western and Jap—with these developed in more moderen instances by conceptual artwork, the Fluxus motion, postmodern dance, up to date music, and efficiency artwork, all of which declare, consciously or not, to inherit the legacy of classical Greek Cynicism. Within the period of an rising synthetic intelligence, with its potential to reconfigure the class of the paintings—its authority, its discursive enunciation, its originality, and so forth—The Cynics Republic gives a collective writing of the occasion by a broad vary of up to date performances. Its structure takes under consideration these main traits, placing them into apply inside the context and timeframe that permits for its growth, managing cultural sources economically whereas adapting to circumstances: on the one hand, it favors dematerialized (decarbonized) or site-specific (domestically produced) works, and on the opposite, it embraces spontaneity, improvisation, and the open expertise of protocols and conduct. The Cynics Republic views private and non-private collections of efficiency artwork as a part of a repertoire of timeless gestures. A group of modest gestures—helpful and accessible—which were put again into play: an open useful resource (open-source), not in contrast to the traditional Cynic fragments (sayings, anecdotes, and verses) which were copied and re-copied over time. These gestures—like knowledge—are activiated inside The Cynics Republic by the work of artists who reclaim this shared heritage, whether or not deliberately or instinctively. In doing so, they generate new actions, gestures, and creative attitudes, transmitting values that resist typical standards for evaluating cultural objects, equivalent to rarity, uniqueness, and originality. The Cynics Republic goals to grow to be an area for premature, disinterested approaches that draw their vitality from being reactivated within the current. That is how the exhibition seeks to rethink the position of the gathering and the museum as an establishment.
VANESSA
How do you see the model of the exhibition introduced on the Museum of Fashionable Artwork in Warsaw?
PIERRE
The second version of The Cynics Republic proven within the Museum of Fashionable Artwork’s just lately opened house in Warsaw takes the type of a vertical exhibition—like a spinal column operating by the open house of the monumental staircase resulting in the galleries. The museum’s new location on Plac Defilad has a horizontal structure that displays a rethinking of social values. This stands in distinction to the encircling cityscape, dominated by industrial high-rises that reinforce conventional hierarchies. Guests are invited to interact with the artworks by strolling up and down the principle staircase, turning the straightforward act of shifting by the house right into a type of efficiency. The set up attracts on Foucault’s “disciplinary society.” He first developed the idea in his e book Self-discipline and Punish not lengthy after his 1958–59 residency in Poland because the director of the French Cultural Heart, positioned not removed from Warsaw’s Palace of Tradition. The e book explores how societal norms and guidelines are internalized, utilizing the instance of Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon as an architectural metaphor for disciplinary energy normally. The Palace of Tradition, a present from Stalin throughout the communist period, is a literal embodiment of Foucault’s idea. Mounted on a scaffold that mirrors the Palace, positioned simply throughout the road, the works in The Cynics Republic problem accepted social norms and revisit the values of historical Cynicism: impermanence, autonomy, resilience, and ease. These values converse on to right this moment’s social and environmental challenges.
Translated by Dean Inkster.
at Museum of Fashionable Artwork, Warsaw
till June 8, 2025
Pierre Bal-Blanc lives and works between Paris and Athens. A contract curator and essayist, his newest touring challenge revolving across the notions of protocol and efficiency is La République Cynique, introduced on the Palais de Tokyo in November 2024 and at the moment on the Musem of Fashionable Artwork in Warsaw. He has produced monographic exhibitions of Cezary Bodzianowski for the Maura Greco Basis in Naples, Adrian Paci for Cukrarna Gallery in Ljubljana, and Tomislav Gotovac for MSU in Zagreb. His movie from a efficiency exhibition at galerie gb company in Paris I GOT UP AT 8:59 AM OCT. 19 2021 was introduced within the official number of the Cinéma du réel pageant in 2023. In 2022, as co-curator of documenta, he revealed Notes sur la documenta 14 (The Continuum Was Carried out within the Following Method) (NERO-CAC Geneve).
Vanessa Desclaux is an artwork critic and curator. Professor of Artwork Historical past on the École nationale supérieure d’artwork de Dijon (2011–19), she holds a PhD in Curating (Goldsmiths, College of London).
