A-Part Editions 2010-2014 | GRIMANESA AMOROS

festival a-part

les éditions précédentes

At midnight on August 31, 2014, when the dialogues with Goya end and the artists’ flags stop flapping in the wind of the Alpilles, what will remain in our minds of the first five editions of the festisval a-part ? Myraids of caffeine-loaded images and words, smiles and rants, surprising discoveries and paradoxical encounteres, visions of flowing wines, slipping clichés and striking installations.

First to come to my mind is what happened on July, 10, 2011 at 7:30pm: following Leila’s spontaneous instruction, Ben, Gérard Fromanger, Michel Onfray together with a joyful audience moved all the chairs of the overcrowded city council room of Saint-Rémy-de-Provence down the staircase to improvise a debate on the square under the unbelieving gaze of the city officials. Then lots of images scattered from 2010 till 2014… Among them, Robert Combas remixing the abandoned school kids clothes into his black mental monsters in the school yard of La République… Daniel Spoerri spreading the walls of the upper floor of the Cordeliers cloister with hundreds of disused kitchenware, all darwiningly connected through his vision… Scenocosme making plants sing when stroked by the visitors in the Château des Alpilles… The upper-case woman, ORLAN, spreading wild hybridations, from an over-inflated harlequin-painted stretched-limo to the MRI images of exuberant mutations seen in l’Hôtel de Manville… The lower-case man, mounir fatmi, answering back with a blinding gigantic flower made with photocopiers and Salman Rushdie sleeping in the depth of Post Tenebras Lux… Five young people dancing to the rythms of the flood of colors, forms and sounds of Miguel Chevalier in the Carrières-de-Lumières… Two wide-eyed ladies staring at Claudio Parmiggiani’s ladder thrusting to the sky from the top of a hill next to Pierredon Abbey… And last, fuelled by some foie gras and a very old cognac at the Domaine d’Altavès, remembering the laugh of Pascal Schmitt, the virtualist who left us for unknown skies on Dec, 13, 2013, 13 minutes past midnight. Hail to the rebel

For the past five years, a-part has been a totally exceptional festival. Out-of-line. Totally free, because refusing all elitism. Exploring every facet of contemporary art, from ceramics to digital art, from street art to video and drawing. Not everything achieves perfection. Some pieces disappoint, too easy or too difficult. Other pieces delight some while they let others cold. Out-of-line is the name of the game. Not the dull certainty of some aesthetic coterie, but a perpetual immersion into the most exhilarating unknow. That’s the key to these unexpected moments, intriguing or magical encounters which will crowd the memory of the festival-goers, for a long time.

Ariel Kyrou

Golden Uros, 2011, Installation au sol, 390, 200, 35 cm, Chapelle de la Persévérance,
Tarascon; 2012, Installation verticale 396, 216, 40 cm, Oustau de Baumanière, Les Baux-de-Provence
Grimanesa Amorós Studio Rendering © de l’artiste