daybyday & another day

Silence characterizes Vassivière Island. In spite of its strong vocation for tourism, the Centre international d’art et du paysage is a place where silence predominates. It conditions the destiny and activity of the art centre, which, as defined by its particular, archetypal status, is no ordinary site of transit for artworks but a place for creation and production. The art, culture, architecture and landscape structure inscribed in the Centre’s birth certificate obliges the artists to launch into a complex and radical adventure, to experiment with their own work in relation to these omnipresent and constituting elements of the site.

This new exhibition by Belgian artist Nico Dockx, opening February 18, 2006, seems to perfectly incarnate Director Chiara Parisi’s vision for the Vassivière art centre. Parisi wishes to engage the Centre more actively in research and, as in preceding exhibitions, drive it toward site-specific experiments.

Nico Dockx’ practice is particularly varied: artist, archivist, librarian, film director, curator, graphic artist, translator, performer. For his exhibition at Vassivière (as was the case for artists previously invited here), he accepted to take on the entirety of Aldo Rossi’s cumbersome architecture and to transform it into an evolving laboratory -bringing together sound as well as image, his personal archives and as well as those of his close relations.

Dockx’s work continually develops in confrontation with, and in relation to, other actors. On this occasion he has invited artists Aglaia Konrad and Mark Luyten with the Building Transmission collective to accompany him in producing the exhibition, which they intend to enrich with new collaborations and new elements throughout the duration of the show.

The project daybyday & another day is a repetition and an evolution, an improvisation on the favourable terrain that is time. One thinks of Nietzsche’s “eternal return”, only with an additional element, one more emotion, offered by the artists each day.

Nico Dockx’s project brings together different processes of production now widely associated with the exhibition mode: mixing, display, free style, replay.

In this way, The Centre international d’art et du paysage de l’île de Vassivière is becoming a tremendous experimental tool, fully assuming its function as a centre for art production: no longer showing what has been accomplished, but that which is in the making, producing the moment rather than the finished object.

The Centre international d’art et du paysage de l’île de Vassivière becomes a receptacle and platform for rediffusion. The sound material will remain in the nave of the art centre, but anyone can re-activate Building Transmission’s project via Internet by visiting http://www.buildingtransmissions.com Other invited artists will also be able to remix the soundtrack live on Vassivière Island and to permanently recreate a different sound for the exhibition.

Five hundred posters published by Nico Dockx form on integral part of the project and will be distributed to different international contemporary art structures. The Centre international d’art et du paysage de l’île de Vassivière thus becomes a privileged site for receiving the collection of projects and collaborations.

The Nico Dockx exhibition, presented within the framework of the Festival Francophone en France, proposes new ways of entering into contact with Vassivière Island and its art centre.

Within the framework of this exhibition, a catalogue is edited by Silvana Editoriale (Milan). Art direction: Paola Manfrin.

The International Center for Art and Landscape receives support from the Ministry of Culture and Communication / Drac Limousin, the Limousin Regional Board, the General Board of la Creuse and the Mixed Regional and Inter-departmental Syndicate of Vassivière en Limousin (SYMIVA).

Pressetext

daybyday & another day
Nico Dockx / Aglaia Konrad / Mark Luyten

18.02.06, 18:00 Eröffnung:
live soundtrack performance by Building Transmissions 
www.buildingtransmissions.com