ARTISTS TALKING

An immense red brick chimney emerges above the low-rise buildings in the ‘Cours Emile Zola’. It reaches to the clouds, which float quietly through the still summer sky. We are close; the last few metres through the baking hot streets of Villeurbanne, one of Lyon’s suburbs. The cityscape of closely-knit streets opens up onto a vast rectangle of grass flanked on its longest sides by a row of trees. This is the ‘Parc du Centre’. At its core stands the majestic chimney. A circular passage has been carved out of its base. An elliptical ramp thrusts through its mouth, and settles again bridging the edges of the park.

Artist Felice Varini has again worked on the existing architectural features, producing new perspectives within the built environment. When the former textile factory was dismantled in the 1990s, the chimney was saved at the request of the local population. Varini decided to use it to create a ‘natural’ viewpoint. We walk up the platform. From here we can see the roofs of the city. Once inside the giant mouth, we start feeling dizzy. A dark void lurks underneath the grid we are standing on. Looking up, our eyes glide along the smooth surface of the long cylinder. They are led up the pipe, as the smoke rising from the furnace of the factory once did.

The city of Villeurbanne, which commissioned Varini was assisted in this process by Art/Entreprise, an agency that specialises in project managing large-scale artworks within the urban realm. Back to ‘Cours Emile Zola’, we make our way to Art/Entreprise headquarters for a meeting with the director George Verney-Carron.

Art/Entreprise is not your typical public art organisation. Public commissions are just one of four strands of activities which come under the umbrella of ‘Communiquez’, a communication agency of forty employees. Art/Entreprise has a gallery, in which they ‘test’ artists they consider for commissions. Verney-Carron believes that “social entities, ie cities and corporate organisations, build a public image not only through marketing and PR campaigns but also through everything they do. If they want to give a coherent image to the outside world, these entities need a global artistic direction.” This is why he runs an organisation that isn’t solely a public art consultancy but an interior and light design company and a PR agency. For him, these activities can be summarised into one: communication. Through branding, he ensures social entities give out the same message. Prophet in his own land, Verney-Carron is active on all the fronts of his multi-faceted business.

This business school graduate, son of an industrialist, fell in love with art at a young age. His family home was opposite the ‘Musée d’Art et d’Industrie’ in St Etienne and he discovered contemporary art at a young age thanks to its programme of temporary exhibitions. When he created his first communications agency in the early 1970s, Verney-Carron saw the potential of art as a marketing tool for the corporate sector; an idea, which is now a matter of course. From then, he doubled up his career of communications agency director with the one of curator, organising exhibitions in banks and former factories and creating the ‘Nouveau Musée’, a museum without walls in collaboration with Jean-Louis Maubant. Later given a space by the council, they opened a ‘centre d’art’ in Villeurbanne, which later merged with the local FRAC¹ to become the ‘Institut d’Art Contemporain’, one of France’s leading venues for contemporary art. In the early eighties, Verney-Carron opened a gallery with art dealer Philip Nelson on the ground floor of his communications agency, where they showed Thomas Schütte and Gloria Friedmann, then little known. Verney-Carron soon realised that it would be more beneficial if artists went out of the white cube to pro-actively meet the public and in 1984, he created Art/Entreprise with the intention of connecting artists with the political and economical spheres: artists and creators should meet local authorities and business people whilst working in the urban realm. “The city is my script. I am constantly observing and analysing what is going on,” declares Verney-Carron.

Cities are Art/Entreprise’s area of predilection. The consultancy supports city councils and other sponsors during the commissioning process in what is primarily an advisory role: it informs, suggests, signposts but it never decides. “It is all a question of contacts and networks,” comments Verney-Carron, “we know which engineering and building companies we can trust and work with.” Art/Entreprise doesn’t contract anyone directly but instead puts people in touch with one another. They connect council workers with artists, architects, designers and engineers and help implement the commissioning process from conception to realisation. This is what the French call ‘assistance à la maîtrise d’ouvrage’.

First comes the definition of the brief, which the commissioner defines with the help of Art/Entreprise, upon the analysis of the historical and socio-economical context of the site. Once the brief is established, the call for artists is made. In the case of the Villeurbanne commission, fifty artists responded to the call. A jury composed of arts professionals and of one counsellor selects three to four applicants, who are asked to submit a ‘cahier d’idées’(proposal) in exchange for a fee. One proposal is finally chosen and is passed onto a ‘bureau d’étude’ for a feasibility study. The ‘bureau d’étude’ team of experts carry out a financial and technical analysis, which will determine how to proceed with the construction, in collaboration with the artist. The artist and the commissioner benefit from the support of Art/Entreprise, which acts as a mediator between all parties. This shifts the responsibility away from the artist to the consultancy in terms of the practical feasibility of the project. This system would encourage UK artists, who have reservations about pursuing public art commissions.

But Art/Entreprise is not always involved as a consultancy to the commissioner; sponsors also approach artists directly. When the latter don’t wish to project-manage the commission, they can seek the help of Art/Entreprise. On the request of Gérard Collin-Thiébaut, Art/Entreprise produced the National Memorial to the Algerian War commissioned by the Ministry of Defence. In this case, Art/Entreprise is ‘assistant d’artiste’ (artist’s assistant).

The public art consultancy also pitches together with artists and responds to calls for proposals. If they get the job, they are co-contractors with the artist, who gets two thirds of the fee. The financial arrangements implemented by Art/Entreprise are clear: when artists are approached by Art/Entreprise for a commission, they receive a fee for every stage of the project. “These rules were implemented twenty years ago,” remarks Verney-Carron, “and it has been running like this ever since.”

Four years after the creation of Art/Entreprise, Verney-Carron takes over the programming of what was until then the Galerie Nelson. Constantly on the look out for possible connections, he wants to make it a laboratory where less-established artists can experiment under his scrutiny. There Verney-Carron observes who is going to be capable of realising artworks in the urban realm. This is also where the constituency can find out about commissions and changes in their city. In 1999, Art/Entreprise opened a branch and gallery in Paris, Site Odéon 5, in collaboration with architect Jean-Michel Villemotte. Agnès Violeau explains that commissioners and collectors come to Site Odéon 5 to find more about the Art/Entreprise artists.

Thanks to all these mechanisms, Art/Entreprise achieves major commissions: the interventions of Daniel Buren on the Terreaux square and the Célestins car park in Lyon and the ‘Human Constellation’ by Chen Zen. They also co-programme major art events such as the ‘Nuits Blanches’ in Paris, the St Etienne Biennale, and the Lyon Art Biennale for which, at the next opening Spencer Tunick will perform his usual out-pouring of naked bodies. “We would like to find a UK partner, who does what we do and with whom to collaborate” announces George Verney-Carron. They have extended their activities beyond France: Site Odéon 5 is currently working on a project with Varini for the costal city of Galway in Ireland.

The port of Marseille shines in the light of the midday sun. White boats are sleeping on the azure water. The city awakens gently in the moments following lunchtime. The intense heat slows our movements. As we struggle our way around the port, we reach the street that leads to the Bureau des Compétences et des Désirs (BCD). Created ten years ago by Yannick Gonzalez and Sylvie Amar, this organisation as with Art/Entreprise manages the commissioning of artworks in the public realm.

Number 8 of Rue Chevalier Roze with its glassed shop-front looks quite modest. Inside, coloured strips of plastic hang from the ceiling down to the floor obscuring the narrow space. Co-ordinator Alessandra Bellavita, who graduated from the RCA Curating course, comes and greets us. We want to propose to BCD to be a partner for the ‘Panacea’ project². As we walk through the wall of plastic ribbons, Alessandra tells us that they form part of the current exhibition, ‘D-Light’ by the Cooked in Marseille designers. ‘D-Light’ is a D-I-Y lampshade, to be cut out of the poster advertising the exhibition. BCD invited Cooked in Marseille to create a multiple as part of the ‘Serial Objects’ commissions, which questions the nature of the multiple.

“The programming of the gallery is quite empirical,” indicates Yannick Gonzalez. It is where the commissions managed by BCD and process-based projects are presented to the public. In 2004, CALC³, presented ‘affective geography’, an online mapping project through which community members were invited to map their environment using the internet and mobile phones. Having a mission to establish links between art and society, BCD felt in osmosis with CALC’s concerns.

BCD’s mission is made possible by Nouveaux Commanditaires (New Patrons), a scheme by the Fondation de France⁴. This scheme aims at fostering a new relationship between art, artists and society through the mediation of a handful of art organisations. It incites citizens to engage with art and with their living environment by giving them the possibility to initiate an art commission. Members of any given community can take the responsibility of commissioning an artwork and approach the BCD, which manages the programme for the South East of France. At the heart of this scheme lies a strong belief in the principles of democracy: it makes citizens become aware of their responsibility towards society and encourages them to make use of this power of change.

BCD and other Nouveaux Commanditaires delegates such as Eternal Network in Tours, acts as a mediator between the patrons and the artist. They accompany the ‘new patrons’ during the writing of the ‘cahier des charges’ (commission brief and budget) and raise the costs not covered by the Fondation de France, which typically finances one third of the commission. Here no public call for artists will take place: the mediator recommends the artist they judge the most adequate to the commission, who prepares an ‘étude artistique’ (proposal). A technical analysis is then carried out, if necessary by engineers. When the project is ready to be realised, a contract is signed between the patron and the artist. The commissions are realised by national and international artists in a range of locations: schools, hospitals and villages.

Francesco Finizio, ‘Errare Humanun Est’, designed a corridor for a private school where fake doors alternate with real ones. Michelangelo Pistolletto realised a multi-faith praying area ‘Lieu de recueillement et de prière’ for one of Marseille’s hospitals. The staff members of this hospital were keen to create a space where patients and their family of all religious and non-religious backgrounds could pray or meditate. The choice of Pistoletto, whose work has concentrated on the relationship with the sacred and the spiritual, imposed itself to Yannick and Sylvie Amar. The inhabitants of the village of St Raphael invited photographer Patrick Faigenbaum to record the people, traditions and activities that have made up its identity.

Art/Entreprise and BCD have set themselves up as facilitators of projects that are normally initiated by other parties. Yannick Gonzales admits that at the start of the ‘Nouveaux Commanditaires’, BCD had to solicit organisations, which were not yet aware of its existence. Now however, organisations and community groups come to them. Both have made the choice of having a gallery space as a window onto the world, where the local constituency and other interested people can come and find out more about the changes that take place in their environment whether they are initiated by fellow citizens or members of local authorities. This space can also be used as a laboratory where ideas and artworks can be developed and tested before being implemented in the real world. One can only hope that what has been extracted from the real world to be manipulated by artists, manages to contaminate some of us once it is stirred back in. This thought lightens our steps as we drag our reluctant shadows through the late-afternoon sun.

¹ Fonds Régional d'Art Contemporain ( Regional Art Collection)
² See 'The Hole of France Part 1'
³ A Seville-based artist group who describe themselves as "an interactive infrasculpture". www.calcaxy.com/calc/booc.html
⁴ A trust, which funds social, cultural and scientific projects on the condition that they are of general interest.

Contacts:

Art/Entreprise
www.art-entreprise.com
Communiquez
www.communiquez.fr
Bureau des Compétences et des Désirs
www.bureaudescompetences.org
Nouveaux Commanditaires (New Patrons)
www.nouveauxcommanditaires.com
Biennale de Lyon
www.biennale-de-lyon.org
Institut d’Art Contemporain – Villeurbanne
www.i-art-c.org