This book is a companion to the Atopolis exhibition
held at WIELS as part of the arts program for Mons 2015, European Capital of
Culture. In contributions by a score of artists about our era and environment,
the project juxtaposes the history of the town of Mons and the surrounding Borinage
area with that of international modernity. What we generally call
"modernity", a history of multifarious
and far-reaching conquests in a bid to control the world by means of science
and technology, is also about ways in which art plumbs the hidden dimensions of
our behavior, ideas and subjectivity. While Atopolis seeks to rediscover models of social
and cultural utopias developed by leading figures in this region of Wallonia,
the exhibition also shows fascinating works by artists attentive to and
critical of the modern era of globalization, an age of uniform information channels
and free trade, which has given rise to an unprecedented degree of connectivity
– and disorientation. Atopolis echoes
the ideas of Édouard Glissant, the Martinican philosopher of identity and
migratory flows. It is a metaphor for our digital age, which, in attaching
great importance to the development of models of cohabitation and coexistence,
seems to refer directly to the social utopias that emerged in this particular
region. This publication is constructed around two interdependent axes: the
first part is based on texts by four different authors in the form of notes on
all the artists who bear some relation to the exhibits. The second consists of a
number of textual and iconographic elements drawn chiefly from the Mons-based Mundaneum
archives, extracts from the writings of Edouard Glissant, Raoul Vaneigem, Paul
Lafargue et al., and previously
unpublished material by Allan Sekula about the Borinage.
Published on the occasion of the eponymous exhibition
held at the Manège de Sury in Mons from June to October 2015, curated by Dirk Snauwaert
and Charlotte Friling
Editors: Sébastien Biset and Raphaël Pirenne
Essays by Jan Baetens, Sébastien Biset, Yves
Citton, Charlotte Friling, Raphaël Pirenne, Dirk Snauwaert, Yoann Van Parys and
Elvan Zabunyan
Contributing artists: Saâdane Afif, Nevin
Aladağ, Francis Alÿs, Danai Anesiadou, El Anatsui, Yto Barrada, Huma Bhabha,
Vincen Beeckman, Vlassis Caniaris, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Meschac Gaba, Jef
Geys, Thomas Hirschhorn, David Medalla, Adrian Melis, Benoit Platéus, Walter
Swennen, Diego Tonus, Jack Whitten et al.
Graphic design: Harrisson (Joël Vermot) and
Myriam Dousse
A joint publication of (SIC) and WIELS
Published
in 2015
In
English and French
20 x 26 cm
256 pages
ISBN: 978-2-930667-12-6
EAN: 9782930667126
