Troupe/troep

Please note – this page is under construction. Photo’s and text will regularly be added.

The group exhibition Troupe/troep took place from 29 to 31 January 2021 on invitation by ChezKit in Pantin.

One of the starting points for the development for this project on chaos and non-linearity, was the photographic short film ALL TIME IS ALL TIME by Ivan Blazhev and Mike Blow. The film is inspired by Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5 and the controversial bombing of Dresden at the end of World War II in which the entire historic core of the city was razed to the ground. The film focusses on the reconstruction of the city as a pretext for exploring history, memories, their fragility, and nonlinear, broken time. From this Troupe/troep was developed as a reflection on current times, the fragmentation, chaos and waste of the world, questioning the body and its functioning in times of crises, connecting the human and non-human, trying to find sense and beauty in the discarded. But it also became a project about risk taking in which a band of artists, artworks, a curator and an artist space try to figure out what they are doing in uncertain times. What does it mean to organize an exhibition against the grain when culture is deemed to be ‘non-essential’?

The troupe or band consists out of seemingly unconnected figures, not unlike the meeting of artists that would eventually form the first Dada group in the Zurich of 1916. Some of the troupe’s members are, like Mike Blow, affiliated with Bureau Doove – Sara Bomans, Alexandra Dementieva, Hantu (weber + delsaux), Remco Roes (here in collaboration with Koenraad Claes) and Neil Wood. To this were added Benoît Géhanne, who’s inspiring studio visit made me discover Pantin, and Chloé Elmaleh, one of the artists working at ChezKit. And then there’s the group of graduates that I had the pleasure of meeting and working with at ESADHaR Le Havre-Rouen while teaching there: Julie Canu, Lucas Cyrille, Louise Delacroix, Fleure Leclere, Si Liu, Thomas Maestro, Tom Sagit, Agathe Schneider and Wenyu Zhang. But basically there are no divisions or categories, only meetings, conversations and exchanges. The Dutch word troep has the same pronunciation as the French troupe, but it is not just a repetition or alliteration. It adds the sense of messiness to the mix, which is however used in a constructive way.

This page is a collection of images taken by several of the participants before, during and after the exhibition. In a certain sense it can be called a research exhibition in which we experimented with a collective form of curating in response to a space that is normally used as a collective studio, introducing a tongue-in-cheek form of mediating with a daily cake which showed the plan of the exhibition on which the artists were indicated through small parasols.

The page will also collect texts written by me and others as a preparation for a the second publication of Bureau Doove Éditions later this spring.

Above from left to right and above to down – Ivan Blazhev/Mike Blow, ALL TIME IS ALL TIME, 2020; Alexandra Dementieva, Kapella, 2020; Hantu, La caldara; From front to back: Si Liu, Mille lis de rivières et de montagnes, 2018-20; Chloé Elmaleh, Tiens toi droite, 2021;
Wenyu Zhang, L’orphelin du monde merveilleux, 2021; Tom Sagit, Futurs hybrides, 2021; From front to back: Neil Wood, Wild Bunch, 2021; Thomas Maestro, Savoir si le sel est dans l’eau ou dans la bouche, 2021; Sara Bomans, Busy Being Born, 2020; From left to right: Louise Delacroix, Cadence, 2019-21; Julie Canu, Jours de pluie, 2021; Si Liu, Mille lis de rivières et de montagnes, 2018-20; Lucas Cyrille, Information concrète, 2021; From left to right: Hantu, La caldara; Agathe Schneider, Luffa, lifah, loofah, loufah, 2021; Benoît Géhanne, Groupe, retenue, 2019; Remco Roes/Koenraad Claes, Lost and found: a recollection of the studio, 2020