Cosmopolis #1 — Collective Intelligence — Centre Georges Pompidou — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: October 18 → December 18, 2017

The Centre Pompidou presents the first edition of Cosmopolis, a new platform that highlights research-based artistic practices and a renewed engagement with theories of cosmopolitanism.

Through micro-residencies, research, exhibitions, talks, performances, and screenings, Cosmopolis highlights a spectrum of creative approaches that are both rooted in a particular context and engage in international conversations, reflecting on cultural translation and the situatedness of knowledge.

‘Cosmopolis #1: Collective Intelligence’ looks at current forms of artistic collaboration. The 1990s saw major turn towards collaborative and social practices and a proliferation of artists’ collectives. In order to better understand this drive to create collectively, Cosmopolis showcases practices centered on knowledge sharing and on the development of social fabric through encounters, discussions, meals, trips, publications and the creation of schools, festivals or other cultural structures. These artistic practices and strategies constantly question the current role of art in society and cultural institutions.

Cosmopolis #1 gathers artists, curators, researchers, publishers, architects and other cultural producers who choose to operate collaboratively and affirm the potential of creative practices to convey knowledge and create new ways of being in the world. Their cosmopolitanism draws attention to the representation of difference and mobility — migration, exile, diaspora — but is not associated with a lack of rootedness. It reflects the complexity of the movements and communications of our time, but cultivates a deep sense of the local.