CURA.

The exhibition Life to Itself was planned before the Covid-19 pandemic. During our initial discussions in November 2019, we talked about the way in which the works would parasitise one another. Michel Serres’s book The Parasite (1980) was our starting point: the philosopher explains that the parasite is never invited to a place, but that it always manages to intrude and not necessarily by coming in through the front door. It is difficult to pin down because it constantly transforms itself, sometimes even reversing its role with that of its host. The parasite is not really a fixed entity, but rather a “being in relation”. It forces us to think about things not as objects but as ever-changing sites, dependent on their interactions. Michel Serres gave a lot of thought as to how to approach climate change. One of the steps was to no longer think of things as fixed, but as fugitive and parasitical, in constant transformation.

Since the pandemic began the exhibition was postponed twice: it should have initially take place in summer 2020, then in March 2021. Over time, we have detached from the image of the parasite, perhaps too close to the present tense. Then the idea of a sentient artwork seemed interesting: because the artworks would react to each other, we could say that they were sentient. The works perceive humidity, the movement of other beings, variations of light. They can grow, degrade, form alliances, mutate. Instead of being a fixed set of works to look at, the exhibition could be considered as an assembly of sentient beings. It is then less about how to appreciate the work, to judge its visual qualities, than to ask oneself what it actually is and what it is becoming.

To propose an artwork or an exhibition that is sentient is to give back aesthetic agency to the work itself, and to get away from the classic modality of a subject looking at an object. The sentient work of art no longer needs to be looked at, it simply develops in relation to its milieu, with or without us, humans. To consider the exhibition or the artwork as sentient is a way of respond to the problem of the Anthropocene²: if climate change calls for human beings to shift their focus to better listen to the earth, then we need to find new ways of seeing. To no longer consider the Earth as a resource, but as a sensitive being in relation with other beings, and whose reactions are sometimes imperceptible but have important consequences. Moreover, a sentient artwork can be produced by its connections with other living beings: it has this ability to generate forms that have not been predicted by the artist who originally created it. In relation to its place and to other beings, it transforms, and opens up new possibilities that the action of time calls to light.