Emeline Eudes (2019) “To (re)live With What is Alive: At the Junction of Art and Care”

With “To (re)live With What is Alive: At the Junction of Art and Care” (published in the journal “Critique d’art” in May 2019) by Emeline Eudes, associated researcher at the National Academy (ENSBA) in Paris, our selection for our #ReadingSuggestion ties into one of the main topics discussed at our General Assembly held between December 3^rd and 4^th. In her article she brings together two discourses that have emerged as crucial for a number of our members and other attendees of the event: the notion of care/solidarity and the attention on ecology and sustainable models for art and art events.

We were intrigued by the style of writing which seeks to find a common ground between artistic critique and scientific analysis as much as the arguments Eudes proposes by analysing and juxtaposing three unlikely objects: the most recent work by Swiss artist and marine biology enthusiast Nicolas Floc’h, the 12^th Shanghai Biennial and Uriel Orlow’s “Theatrum botanicum”, the latter placed in a little excursus on the project “The Planetary Garden” in Manifesta 12.

Departing from a consideration on the coming together of scientific research and artistic practice in Nicolas Floc’h, Eudes leads us through the concept of proregress, forged by poet E.E. Cummings and utilized by Cuauhtemoc Medina to form part of his core concept for the 12^th Shanghai Biennial. The term is used to characterize the “ambivalence between emancipatory projects worthy of a form of progress, and political and social regressions currently at work”. Constructing an argument which tries to find a balance between de-growth politics and scientific progress in order to be able to refocus on relevant aspects of our lives the article concludes with a long excursus on the approach held by #OMA in the drafting of the #PalermoAtlass and the construction of @Manifesta12 as a research platform as much as an artistic/cultural project.

In her article we find some ideas about what biennials can become if we are to move away from pure “art events”, a point which many of our members have made with different proposals as to how this would look and what consequences it would have for the wider understanding of the model and of art in general.

Find the full article at the following link: https://journals.openedition.org/critiquedart/46152