Ex Situ - Curatorial Platform

Created in 2018, ex situ is a curatorial platform based in Paris. It invites several young artists and theorists, coming from various backgrounds and countries, to initiate a reflection process around a given topic for one year. During that time, multiple events take place within its European network: a short artist-in-residence program, curatorial “actions” in various locations and discussion sessions. An exhibition promoting the use of interdisciplinary, performative and audio-based media rounds off each cycle and attempts to provide an answer to the question addressed. Envisioned as a laboratory, this platform focuses on contemporary society and its impact on art. It deals with subjects linked to identities, travel, movement, flows, and with the status, position and specificities of exhibition spaces. Ex situ is itself mobile, using both institutional venues and locations whose primary purpose was not always to host art (wasteland, boat, chapel, apartment…). Its goal is to work on “exhibition methods” and to study the forms an exhibit can take. Thus, ex situ focuses on nurturing a dialogue between artists and art theorists, in order to contribute to the spread of research in contemporary art. This mission is also undertaken online, by using ex situ’s website as a space dedicated to archiving and artistic creativity. The term “ex situ” refers to the displacement of an element out of its natural environment. Embracing a “nomadic” approach, promoting a traveling art and its creation process, this aspiration is echoing the concept of “absolute speed” used by Gilles Deleuze. For him, the relative speed is defined as a movement considered from one point to another. The absolute speed is what is in-between those points: it is the speed of nomads, who are “in” their environment. The nomads neither already are, nor will be, but are becoming.