A Spoken Word Exhibition

The first exhibition conceived by Mathieu Copeland as part of the Jeu de Paume’s Satellite program envisages the exhibition of the word and the diffusion of an entire work orally.
Combining writing and mental image, reading and listening, it questions the uniqueness of reading and speech, the place of the word in the exhibition, the question of the exhibition and the catalogue – or rather of the exhibition of the catalogue…

The – read – text makes possible its interpretation, thus becoming its score as well as its memory. “An Exhibition to Hear Read” generates figures to be said, the abstraction of language enabling a form to come into being and, naturally, once uttered, to dissolve. In parallel with this exhibition through the book a series of “spoken retrospectives” is presented. Gustav Metzger, who uses destruction and impermanence as motifs in his work, David Medalla, through the ephemeral and the impromptu, and others are invited to record with their voices an ideal retrospective of their work, or their lives. The motive and materiality of this undertaking can only exist – survive – through the non-documentary exhibition of a radical work, one that avoids as far as is possible the classic presentation of the retrospective. Each retrospective exists only through the words spoken by artists – through the memory of those who have created – thus generating the mental image of an exhibition of time (time of a work whose disappearance affirms its existence, time of a past life) in the minds of those who are listening.

With Vito Acconci, Delphine Coindet, Yona Friedman, Gilles Furtwängler, Matt Golden, Kenneth Goldsmith, Idris Khan, Alison Knowles, Loreto Martínez Troncoso, David Medalla, Gustav Metzger, Raffaella della Olga, Francesco Pedraglio, Aki Sasamoto, Benjamin Seror, Cally Spooner…

Partners
La Fondation Nationale des Arts Graphiques et Plastiques (FNAGP) contributes to the production
of works in the Satellite program.
The Jeu de Paume is a member of the networks Tram and d.c.a / association française de développement des centres d’art.

Media partners
art press, paris-art.com, Souvenirs from earth TV, Radio Nova