The body goes on strike

Babi Badalov, Amie Barouh, Florian Fouché, Hedwig Houben
Curated by: Émilie Renard
From May 20 to July 24, 2021
Opening: May 20, from 4pm to 8pm

Florian Fouché, Spoted object?, The Janmari Manifesto, all the pieces of a plate, glue
22 x 16 x 3 cm, 2020. With the sup­port of the Centre natio­nal des arts plas­ti­ques.

As a mutant virus clings to the pul­monary alveoli and slips unno­ticed towards unknown mucus mem­branes, forcing bodies to keep a dis­tance from one another, and as the State divides and sep­a­rates us out according to obscure san­i­tary logics, a bio­log­ical force reveals weak­nesses, depen­den­cies, and infinite reserves of patience. The ambient catas­trophe of Covid forms the back­drop to this exhi­bi­tion, which has taken shape over a painfully long year during which cul­ture has been rel­e­gated to the regime of the non-essen­tial.

This exhi­bi­tion, the first in Émilie Renard’s pro­gramme at Bétonsalon, brings together works by four artists that centre on the expe­ri­ences of bodies that are weak­ened, hin­dered, marginal­ized, or over­ex­posed: a soli­tary body gath­ering proofs of its legit­i­mate exis­tence for a bureau­cratic admin­is­tra­tion (Babi Badalov); an ambiguous char­acter, Body, who set­tles into a com­fort­able sofa and a world of idiosyn­cratic plea­sures, who retakes con­trol of wan­dering thoughts and alter­nates between free asso­ci­a­tion and con­cen­tra­tion (Hedwig Houben); bodies that pivot around a tip­ping point between assisting and assisted (Florian Fouché); the bodies of lovers and friends ani­mated by the pres­ence of an unflinching video­camera that cap­tures, moves and sep­a­rates them (Amie Barouh). This exhi­bi­tion pro­poses to observe the unex­plored, devalued and dor­mant forms of expe­ri­en­tial knowl­edge that fatigue, weari­ness, and exhaus­tion might yet dis­close. Bringing together rep­re­sen­ta­tions of bodies that are described, per­ceived or iden­ti­fied as vul­ner­able, it looks to amplify the faint sig­nals of their power.

The title of this exhi­bi­tion is inspired by a fable by La Fontaine, Les Membres et l’Estomac [King Gaster and the Members], first pub­lished in 1668. In the story, the hands, the legs, and the feet have grown tired of working. They meet, dis­cuss their shared con­di­tion, and decide to simply stop feeding the stomach. The fable describes a dis­so­ci­ated body, caught in a class con­flict between the worker-limbs and the internal organs ruled over by the stomach, King Gaster, whose gov­er­nance and admin­is­tra­tive and polit­ical func­tions soon turn out to be vital for the ‘kingdom’ of the body as a whole. The polit­ical tur­moil and the health crisis that ensues are brought to a close when the striking limbs are reminded of their recip­rocal engage­ments and the body becomes fully oper­a­tional once more.

The body goes on strike sets out the hypoth­esis of a mobi­lized and engaged body delib­er­ately dis­loyal to its rational and bio­log­ical func­tions. In this, the exhi­bi­tion’s title oper­ates as a nar­ra­tive fic­tion that pre­cedes the expe­ri­ence of the works, ges­tures, words and texts of which it is com­posed, and opens up a space of spec­u­la­tion around a body strug­gling to free itself from the cen­trality of the stomach and the ver­ti­cality of the head, a body uncou­pled from its func­tion­alism and open to the anthro­poly­mor­phous anatomies mutating within it.

Babi Badalov, Bureaucratic Diaries, 2010-2014, FNAC 2020-0350 (1 to 13), Centre national des arts plas­tiques ©Babi Badalov / Cnap / Photo : Fabrice Lindor

Amie Barouh, I can change but not 100%, 2019, colour video, 40’24, Amok Films pro­duc­tion

Florian Fouché during his res­i­dency at Bétonsalon, April 2021

Hedwig Houben, Phewzlopffffffff, 2019, video, 19’, col­lec­tion Frac Île-de-France