Introduction of Benjamin Sabatier's website
Violaine Boutet de Monvel, February 2010
Since its foundation in 2001, International Benjamin’s Kit (IBK) fuels the aesthetical program of Benjamin Sabatier at the core of the social and economic realms. Conceived as a structure of production and above all an artwork in itself, IBK whose logo wittingly resembles the one of IKEA contemplates and ponders the business world as much as the history of contemporary art. Indeed, the acronym equally reflects IKB (International Klein Blue), Yves Klein’s patented and famous blue color, while the artist’s name refers (ad hoc) to Walter Benjamin and his theories of the work of art in the age of its technical reproducibility.
A cradle of serial artistic productions, the materials of which are systematically gleaned in the immediate, affordable or residual, consumption universe, IKB is guided by the willingness to make art accessible to the many, following a principle that is close to the Do It Yourself philosophy of the 1960s hippie utopias. However, Benjamin Sabatier’s approach within this structure cannot be reduced to the sole attempt of democratization in regard to the distribution of the object. Its first goal is to induce the artistic experience. Its products are therefore not created as unique objects of contemplation: they require participation. In order to make the most of an IBK artwork, his “customers” are invited to re-initiate its power through not only its simple installation, but also, first and foremost, its realization (its assemblage or its reproduction).
Thus IBK, the aesthetical concept of which offers a model of alternative economy for the art market, intends to erase the separation between the functions of production and consumption that deprives producers and consumers of their knowledge, i.e. their capacity to partake in the socialization of the world through its transformation. In view of the current economic issues that concern the future of our societies (issues related to the environment, the waste treatment, the fair trade, the economic growth, or the sharing of social “experiences” in a broad sense), IBK suggests the becoming “artist” of everyone in the fusion of the aesthetic and creative experience.
Codirected by Jeff Stanley & Violaine Boutet de Monvel, INHA, Paris, FRANCE (June 24, 2009)
Exquisite corpse video project
The Passage 2009 is an international collaboration in the form of an exquisite corpse video project between artists from the United States, France, and Canada, under the direction of Jeff Stanley (University of Texas at Austin) and Violaine Boutet de Monvel (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne).
Because we wanted the Passage 2009 to be an original collaborative manifestation, Jeff Stanley and I worked from the start with the help of Jonathan Regier (American poet residing in Paris) on a global (not dictatorial) narrative structure divided into three acts to host the videos: I The Falling Asleep, II The Visions, III The Waking Up. Each act contains different quotes, which indicate a certain atmosphere or state of spirit. Each artist invited to the Passage 2009 has been given one of these quotes, without knowing the other quotes and participants, and has been asked to create a new video inspired by it. Therefore, all the commissioned videos will premiere with the Passage 2009, during which all the quotes and participants will be revealed for the first time. The first screening of the Passage 2009 will take place on June 24th at the National Institute of History of Art (INHA) in Paris, as the closing event of a seminar about American Art (Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University: Journée d'étude Est-Ouest, recherches en cours sur l'art américain). A second screening will occur later in the year in Austin, Texas. The screening of the festival lasts an hour. The artists will be introduced before the projection and a discussion around the videos will end the festival.
- Violaine Boutet de MonvelParticipating in the exhibition this year: Vadim Bernard, Violaine Boutet de Monvel, Joshua Bronaugh, Vincent Ciciliato, Natacha Clitandre, Emma Dusong, Kristina Felix, Eric Hovis, Robert Melton, Jacques Perconte, Jonathan Regier, Rbt Sps, Jeff Stanley, Michael Taylor, Johanna Vaude, and Ricky Yanas.
Violaine Boutet de Monvel, June 2007
Appropriating the original icons of the historic arcade game Space Invaders, designed in 1978 by the Japanese video game developer Toshihiro Nishikado, the mysterious French Invader strikes often in the shadows, but always under the mask, and has been doing so around the globe for almost ten years. Initiated in 1998, in Paris, the invasion of this urban hacker consists in affixing tiles, configured to resemble little aliens and other characters derived from popular video games, on the walls of our towns. Each intrusion brings in a certain number of points scrupulously allotted according to the size of the parasite and the risk incured by the pirate. Simulating the operatic mode of an epidemic, his mosaics are today familiar to many city dwellers between Los Angeles and Tokyo, Paris remaining the most infected capitol with its 704 space invaders tiled on the facades of each of its districts for a score of 15120 points. Of the man who is hiding behind the pseudonym we know to this day only a face carefully pixellated in the portraits made on the locations of his crimes, a portrait in the aesthetic he commandeers. Invader enjoys his celebrity in anonymity, as surely as the pixel, as the tile, is able to conceal the guilty hand. From the profusion and the variation of the little aliens in mosaic, all different from Toshihiro’s originals, there indubitably emerges the signature of a schemer. But what intrigue ?
Hidden in the less accessible or less improbable corners, Invader’s mosaics are the touchstones of a strategy as global as it is meticulous, consisting in the systematic photographic filing of each intrusion, as well as the cartography of each invaded town: from the infinitely little to the infinitely great, from the pixel to the urban network, from the insignificant tiled threat to our hunt for the invader, from the private challenge to the public curse. This intrusion of video game into reality passes through the nobility of a very old medium — the mosaic — and thus honors a technology that has grown now for more than three generations — the digital. The mosaic replaces here the rough pixel which characterized the rudimentary aesthetic of the early video games. And if the virtual fiction pays itself the luxury of a solid and durable material, the playful sphere of the arcade invites itself into the most public of environments — the street — majestically, illegally. Flouting the urban laws that sell to the highest bidder spaces for advertisement, flouting the laws that protect the cherished walls from visual pollution and other acts of vandalism, Invader incites the rage of many municipalities. In a pale imitation of Robin Hood’s virtue, the popularity of Invader’s mosaics benefits as much from the little trade of derivated products on his website www.space-invaders.com (books, invasion maps, posters, running shoes and tee-shirts, all bearing the logo of his invaders), as these sales fuel and encourage his wild spree. In appropriating the streets in a venture of democratic semblance, Invader opens up the way to a new relationship between the city drweller and the advertising image, which abounds with total impunity. In breaking the gaze of the passer-by, and inspiring him with a playful spirit, Invader offers his art to anyone who is willing to consider it art.