![\"Camille](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/Camille-Henrot-No-Battery-Hello-Thank-you-Failed-Dog-Training-v1-2015-Courtesy-de-lartiste-de-Kamel-Mennour-Paris-et-de-la-Biennale-de-Lyon-2015-\u00a9-Blaise-Adilon-copy.jpg\")
Camille Henrot, No Battery, 2015. Courtesy of the artist and the Lyon Biennale<\/p>\n Camille Henrot, No Battery, 2015. Courtesy of the artist and the Lyon Biennale<\/p>\n
It is a brave move to curate an exhibition on the subject of Modern life, given the now 50-year debate on the subject of the Modern and Modernism. How does one find a novel angle, an as yet unexplored approach? The 13th Lyon Biennale, France\u2019s largest, attempts to do just that. Sleek talked to current curator Ralph Rugoff about his take on \u201cModern\u201d, current artistic concerns, and why he doesn\u2019t like the term\u00a0\u2018Post-internet\u2019.<\/p>\n
![\"Emmanuelle](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/LAIN\u00c9-Emmanuelle_Don\u2019t-Cheat-me-out-of-the-fullness-of-my-capacity_2014_courtesy-Emmanuelle-Lain\u00e9\u00a9-Emmanuelle-LAIN\u00c9-copy.jpg\")
Emmanuelle Lain\u00e9, Don\u2019t Cheat me out of the fullness of my capacity!, 2014. Courtesy of the artist and the Lyon Biennale<\/p>\n
Schlank<\/strong> I’m going to dive right in. The topic of the biennial (“La Vie Moderne”) caused me quite some consternation, because it\u2019s such an overloaded topic and it has been debated to death over the past 50 years.<\/p>\n Ralph Rugoff<\/strong> Well, the topic really is just about how artists are exploring what\u2019s happening in the world now. Let’s look at different parts of today, as artists are engaging with it, but with this eye of history in quite a lot of the works, so the contemporary is not a shallow idea, but it has roots.<\/p>\n Yes, but isn’t there also the intensely transitory nature of the contemporary to consider? Hal Foster, for example, has had a lot to say about the phenomenon of contemporaneity.<\/strong><\/p>\n It’s a strange moment in history. We’re in a time of religious wars, we live through these cycles of perpetual financial crises, and we have this great crisis in Europe right now with immigration. That’s just within history. So I’m not sure I agree with that statement.<\/p>\n I think it\u2019s more of a reference about how younger artists are claiming that they have no interest in their art historical precedents, and a lot of contemporary art feels like it sits outside of time.<\/strong><\/p>\n I don’t find “post-internet art” a very helpful term, because I think questioning how technology changes our relationship to images and objects, how we read things, is a subject that artists have been engaged with for a while, whether the technology is photography, film, television, so I see that as part of a continuity rather than a break. And Simon Denny is someone who is very interested in questions of taste. His installation is on one level, an exploration of the taste of internet entrepreneurs, it’s about the kinds of things they collect, but it’s also about the kinds of things the police selected, because when they seized Kim Dotcom’s property, they made a selection. So they made, in a sense, a curatorial choice. So it\u2019s also a reflection of the FBI’s taste.<\/p>\n You look at how different artists address the contemporary condition. Were there any themes that emerged?<\/strong><\/p>\n There were four main areas. The first was the economic life, and that includes, say, Andrea Lolis\u2019 “Permanent Residence”, which references the crisis in Greece as well as homeless people and how they’re treated by society. But also work that’s dealing with our society of consumption and the enormous amount of waste it produces – also a sub-theme of Mike Nelson\u2019s.\u00a0Then there are questions of immigration and national identity that are explored by a number of works, questions about how things have changed and how we relate to objects and images and spaces, and you see that in very different ways. Laura Lamiel\u2019s piece is very powerful, that spatial uncertainty that we have. It’s about virtual reality. And she’s an artist who is 65, so you can’t call her a post-internet artist! Or Emmanuelle Laine, who\u2019s 43, with her installation, which was about mixed temporalities as well as mixed spaces. Finally, there are artists who look at how mediated our relationship has become with nature, like the night-blooming jasmine by Hicham Berrada – works that touch on nature have become something that really do involve nature.<\/p>\n The post-romantic idea of nature?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n It does relate to the idea of the Anthropocene, which is very popular at the moment, but people were discussing that in the sixties! So it\u2019s interesting to see how it’s taken on a new life, because it’s not a new discourse.\u00a0<\/p>\n I think it’s a willingness of certain artists and theorists to jump on an idea.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Yes.<\/p>\n Why did you choose the image of a nuclear power plant set beside a holiday beach as a Leitmotif for the exhibition?<\/strong><\/p>\n It’s a still image from a video that the artist Yuan Goang-Ming made after the Fukushima disaster in Japan. It’s shot in Taiwan. One of the ideas of contemporary life is that these invisible forces exist that are around us all the time, that are potentially very dangerous and that they add this precariousness. There are two hulking reactors in the background of the image, they’re archaic, and it’s funny to have these wind turbines next to them, but I feel that all the time – whether we’re worried about getting on a train, because someone with an AK47 might be on the I got the feeling that a lot of the work is quite dark, sombre and reflective. It’s about sleeping, about yawning and disengagement and escape. Camille Henrot’s piece in the Musee D\u2019Art Contemporain – which is about the great bane of contemporary life, the call centre, and how advice even fails, miscommunication and frustration.<\/strong><\/p>\n That was definitely a work about the frustrations of everyday life, obviously the phone tree is one of them, but it\u2019s also about how we and our emotions are managed in a corporate culture.<\/p>\n There is a wide diversity of voices in this biennial, from Nigeria over Taiwan to Europe and the US.\u00a0Did you get different views of the Modern, or were all elements homogeneous?<\/strong><\/p>\n I think so, there are very different ways of processing information. This Liu Wei piece, for instance, a giant wall of blocks obstructing the way into the main venue, is on one level a response to the megalopolises that have sprung up in China over the last ten years, and this sense of being disoriented in an urban environment that seems so inorganic and yet is going to shape your experience from then on.\u00a0<\/p>\n This is the first biennial you’ve curated. Will there be another?<\/strong><\/p>\n I don’t know, it depends on whether I get invited!<\/p>\n Interview von Jeni Fulton<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n “La Vie Moderne”, the 13th<\/sup> Lyon Biennale<\/a> is on until 3 January 2016 across five venues in Lyon<\/strong><\/p>\n Mehr: Tetsumi Kudo’s Garden of Unearthly Delights<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n![\"Haegue](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/Yang-Haegue-Boursier-Mougenot-C\u00e9leste-copy.jpg\")
Haegue Yang, Sol LeWitt Upside Down – Structure with Three Towers, Expanded 23 Times, 2015. Courtesy of the artist and the Lyon Biennale<\/p>\n![\"Anna](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/Ostoya-Anna-Yellow-Red-Blue-2015-Courtesy-de-tegenboschvanvreden-Amsterdam-de-lartiste-et-de-la-Biennale-de-Lyon-2015-\u00a9-Blaise-Adilon-copy.jpg\")
Anna Ostoya, Yellow, Red, Blue, 2015. The courtesy of the artist and the Lyon Biennale<\/p>\n![\"Nguyen](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/Nguyen-Trinh-Thi-Landscape-Series-1-2013-Courtesy-de-lartiste-et-de-la-Biennale-de-Lyon-\u00a9-Blaise-Adilon-copy.jpg\")
Nguyen Trinh Thi, Landscape Series #1, 2013. Courtesy of the artist and the Lyon Biennale<\/p>\n![\"Emmanuelle](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/LAIN\u00c9-Emmanuelle_Il-para\u00eet-que-le-fond-de-l\u00eatre-est-en-train-de-changer-__2015_Courtesy-de-lartiste-et-de-la-Biennale-de-Lyon-2015-2-copy.jpg\")
Emmanuelle Lain\u00e9, Il para\u00eet que le fond de l’\u00eatre est en train de changer ?, 2015. Courtesy of the artist and the Lyon Biennale<\/p>\n
\ntrain with us, as sense that there is no feeling of safety left. Something’s changed.<\/p>\n![\"Camille](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/HENROT-Camille_Smoking-the-wrong-end-of-a-cigarette-Bird-Droppings-v2_2015_Courtesy-de-lartiste-de-Kamel-Mennour-Paris-et-de-la-Biennale-de-Lyon-2015@Blaise-ADILON.jpg\")
Camille Henrot, Smoking the wrong end of a cigarette, 2015. Courtesy of the artist and the Lyon Biennale<\/p>\n![\"Ralph](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/RalphRugoff_JasperCLarke_2410-copy.jpg\")
Portrait of Ralph Rugoff, photography by Jasper Clarke<\/p>\n