humainnonhumain — Une proposition d’Anne Bonnin — Fondation d’entreprise Pernod Ricard — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: June 12 → July 12, 2014

The “non human” instantly conjures up anything and everything that seems to contradict or destroy the idea of human, it brings forth images of robots, bionic prostheses, extra-terrestrials, every manner of chimaera, but also monsters that are too human, which humanity seems to produce so naturally.

In anthropology, before being incarnated in particular facts and objects, the notion of non-human means, in a neutral and somewhat tautological way, anything that is distinct from the human, thereby forming a countless and infinitely varied population of animate and inanimate things and beings, be they natural, fabricated or fictitious. This category makes it possible to talk about what forms our societies, by opening up the question of our links and our attachments to what is around us, for the non human is everywhere around us, between humans, but also within. This extra-broad category is nevertheless operational : the “non” is an operator, copula and break which unites as much as it separates.

Alexandra Bircken, Turbine, 2013 120 × 35 × 37 cm Courtesy de l’artiste et des galeries BQ, Berlin; Herald St, Londres — Photo © Roman Maerz, Berlin

Faced with this overpopulated vastness, I have chosen the body as the point of departure for a cycle of exhibitions and events which, through art, will explore different forms of non humans: natural, animal, vegetal, archaic, high-tech, toxicological, robotic and phantasmagorical. Because it is the body that, in the first instance, is affected by non-human reality: situated in the forefront of our representations and our thoughts, endowed with many sensitive sensors and antennae, which link it to humans and non-humans. It is through it that we are contemporaries of the world. The term “physicality” describes the plurality of a body, which is reduced neither to the biological nor to the physiological; ways of being, feeding, communicating, behaving, and the affects form it just as much : “the body is never totally acquired; it is still less innate”. (P. Descola).

The exhibition thus sees relations to non-humans from the viewpoint of the body, that is, of physicalities of every shape, size and form.

Anne Bonnin is an art critic and exhibition curator. In 2009, she organized the group shows Pragmatismus & Romantismus at the Fondation d’entreprise Ricard (Paris) and Sauvagerie domestique at the École municipale des beaux-arts/galerie Édouard-Manet (Gennevilliers). She was the curator for the Ateliers de Rennes — biennale d’art contemporain in 2012. She has also taught at the École Supérieure d’Art de Clermont Communauté, at the Ecole supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Strasbourg and at the Ecole supérieure des beaux-arts in Montpellier.