Chantal Pontbriand Livres

MUTATIONS is the first in a series of books published annually on the occasion of Paris Photo, the world’s leading photography fair. The book is designed to echo the events of the fair including public dialogues, round-table discussions and performances. Issues at stake include photography’s social, political, cultural and scientific roles, as well as its impact on gender, portraiture, new technologies and the moving image. With contributions from leading inter - national contributors, MUTATIONS is an invaluable companion to Paris Photo 2011.

The essays in this collection were written in the first decade of the new millennium by critic, editor and curator Chantal Pontbriand. Pontbriand examines themes of being-in-common in today s world and their relation to the development of art practices. As these practices are implemented, other ways of seeing, understanding and making appear. Contemporaneity functions as a flow, a space-time being that cannot be fixated. The body is in the forefront a thermometer of the world lived in and with, marked by dynamics of change and sharing. The work of Claire Fontaine, Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno, Ion Grigorescu, Mike Kelley, Yvonne Rainer, Rirkrit Tiravanija and Jeff Wall, among other artists, is examined in this book, together with insights into the seminal issues of contemporary art.Published by Sternberg Press, Berlin

How does one deal with the current times? Harun Farocki and Rodney Graham provide an answer to this question through their endless invention of new dispositifs. In this sense, as this catalogue demonstrates, both artists practices share concerns about medium, history, self-representation along with questioning the place and role of the artist. Published to accompany the exhibition HF I RG, presented at the Jeu de Paume, Paris, the book through photographs, texts and images explores four recurring concepts found in their the Archive, the Non-Verbal, the Machine, and, Montage.