A Departure Point
This exhibition was first conceptualized during a casual conversation between two friends, artist Kyung Roh Bannwart and curator Je Yun Moon. For a long time, Roh Bannwart has questioned the one-way communication between artists and viewers: the unilateral relationship where artists transfer meanings, which the viewers should interpret. This question led Roh Bannwart to focus on the function and system of exhibition as a ‘representational apparatus.’ She observed that the apparatus itself pre-determines and controls the way viewers experience art.

On the other hand, Moon has been calling into question the existing function of curatorship, which is involved in or inducing ‘hierarchical’ orders among players – curators, artists/artworks, and viewers. She problematizes curatorial practices that start from a theme, and then choose artists or artworks accordingly. Even though Roh Bannwart and Moon started from different positions, they begin to investigate together how to break off from the unilateral curatorship and create a different platform of communication between artworks, curators, and visitors. Their conversation develops into an exhibition, where Benoît Maire and Fabien Giraud participated. This exhibition is their collaborated experiment.

Exhibition as an Object
In order to highlight an exhibition as an object, two curators will install CCTV cameras in a separate room for visitors to experience the exteriority of the exhibition space. However, not every screen is running in real time. By mixing real time images with recordings, they question the viewing tradition based on the perception of ‘now and here.’ Next to the screens, Roh Bannwart’s photographs will be exhibited. A series of photography, Things, incontestable and granted, consists of photographs of several tools, independent from interpretative interference, observed in their strangeness and absolute otherness. In the main exhibition space, Roh Bannwart’s interview-based film communicates with the sculpture/object/installation works created by Benoît Maire and Fabien Giraud.

For this show, Fabien Giraud and Benoît Maire collaborate for the first time on a new piece called On Cats and Faults. They investigate and give shape in the form of a video to their recent activities relating topology and theory of decision. Together with Ruben Cohen, a young digital artist, they have created a 9-minute long 3D video with sound that positions the viewer in relation with objects and worlds in a model cast by shadows and time. Roh Bannwart’s series of videos, This is is an experimental video documentation of interviews with contemporary philosophers who individually discuss their endeavor of access to the real and the objecthood.

Biography
Since 2008 Benoît Maire has been writing a manual of aesthetics where images, objects and writing take form to bring forth some of contemporary aesthetics’ main issues. Starting from the ‘différend’ (insurmountable conflict) between saying and seeing, Benoît Maire works in an in-between where art and philosophy merge into a practical use where forms spread out and surpass one another. Neither philosophy nor art, the ‘aesthetics of différends’ looks to corrupt classical formats by the experimental use of theory. Born in 1978 in Pessac, Benoît Maire is a graduate of the Villa Arson, Nice and of the Sorbonne, Paris 1, and did a post-diplôme at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris. Recent solo exhibitions include Spiaggia di Menzogne at the Fondazione Giuliani, Roma, Weapon at the David Roberts Art Foundation, London, History of Geometry at Walden Affairs Den Haage, History of Geometry at Halle FürKunst, Luneburg, The Object of Criticism at De Vleeshal, Midelburg, and Soon the metal between us will turn into gold, at Kunsthalle Mulhouse. He directed a full-length film, Repetition Island, presented at Tate Modern in London and at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Recent publications includeHistory of Geometry, Archive Books, The Object of Criticism (Roma Publication) and Benoît Maire, Drawing Room Confession.

Fabien Giraud was born in 1980. He presently lives and works in Paris, France. Since 2007 he has collaborated extensively with the artist and filmmaker Raphael Siboni with whom he has exhibited internationally (Palais de Tokyo – 2008, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris – 2009, Santa Fe Biennial -2008, Moscow Biennial 2009 ). In 2014, their new body of works entitled The Unmanned are presented in a series of monographic shows in Luxembourg (Casino du Luxembourg), Canada (Vox in Montreal) and France (Centre International d’Art et du Paysage de l’Ile de Vassiviere). Apart from this collaboration he has developed a theoretical and sculptural practice through the coupled long term projects entitled Du Mort qui Saisit Le Vifand The Marfa Stratum. The latter will be presented in the form of a book (in collaboration with art historian Ida Soulard) on the occasion of his show in Marfa, Texas in 2015. In 2011 he co-founded the series of seminars and workshops entitled The Matter of Contradictionaddressing questions regarding the geological concept of the Anthropocene and its consequences for the theory of art. In 2013, he initiated Glass Bead – a research platform and a journal – launched in 2014 through a series of events in New York, Paris and Istanbul.

Kyung Roh Bannwart has graduated from ECAL/École Cantonale d’Art de Lausanne (Master in Fine Arts) and Central St. Martins College of Art & Design (Bachelor in Fine Arts, London). Recent exhibitions include Practicalities at Basis, Frankfurt (2013), Echo: The Poetics of Translation at Institute of Contemporary Art Singapore (2013), Atrocity Exhibition Archive Paradoxe at Circuit, Lausanne (2012), and Que sera, sera at La station, Nice (2011). Since 2011, she contributes writings to Art in Culture (South Korea) and Kunstbulletin (Switzerland). Also, she’s a member of committee of CAN /Centre d’Art Neuchâtel (Switzerland).

Je Yun Moon is a curator and writer. Her main interest lies on the exhibition and theater, the two major apparatuses that started to function under the specific political project called Western Modernity. She graduated from the Art History Department of the Cornell University and the Curating Contemporary Art Programme at the Royal Academy of Arts. She is currently working on her doctoral thesis entitled “The Technology of Choreography” at the Curator/Knowledge seminar program of Goldsmiths College in London. For the thesis, she researches on the emergence of the special tactic of binding the body with the technology of writing and how this tactic has been deconstructed by contemporary choreographic experiments.