Download here the Visitor's guide. - Les Ateliers de Rennes

Les Prairies
Anne Bonnin, Director of Lucidar and curator of Ateliers de Rennes
The Spirit of New Beginnings
The artistic programme was proposed in response to a call which sought to explore the
relationship between art and business and art and the economy. The point of departure
of my thinking for this edition of the Biennale is the "enterprise", "entreprise" as the
French word for business or company, which I chose to interpret literally, in the first
instance. An enterprise is 'something undertaken' and it carries the idea of a beginning
(Jean-Jacques Rousseau begins his book The Confessions with the words "Je forme une
entreprise […]” - 'I am embarking on an enterprise'). This mode of action led me to an
empirical method, which shaped the way that I would work with the artists as well as
my approach to the context of the Biennale. It provided me with a concrete framework
for the artistic programme in that I was able to place it in a tangible setting: indeed I
considered Rennes and, in particular, the modern city as constructed since the 1960s.
I designed the programme around artists whose work I was familiar with, before
broadening the selection and researching other artists. The theme of conquest, which is
implicit in the thematic of 'prairies', draws on various sources and could be explained in
various ways: appropriating space for a purpose; inventing artistic ways of working with
and in a space – including that of the exhibition itself; exploring notions of expanded
fields and attitude, given that it is attitude that defines a space. What enterprises can be
embarked upon in the hyper-developed world, perceived and represented these days as
saturated?
A FIGURE OF CONQUEST
The figure of the frontiersman, or pioneer, is connected to the theme of conquest and
the prairie. The pioneer is an ambivalent character – a figure of conquest in history and
in legend, whose contradictory aspects need to be prised apart. In modern usage the
term has positive connotations. The pioneer is a precursor who clears a path for others
to follow, goes beyond the limits of knowledge and opens up new vistas in a field. The
historical image, on the other hand, is somewhat negative: the pioneer is a conqueror or
a colonizer and embodies the imperialistic tendencies of Western civilization.
The spirit of conquest is everywhere in the history of our pluralistic, scientific,
technological, political, and of course artistic modernity. The pioneer is a visionary,
a revolutionary, an inventor, and a builder who imagines and prepares a new world.
Operating in the vanguard of society, the pioneer embodies a kind of modern hero who
now belongs to the past. Like the word 'vanguard', 'pioneer' has military origins. In the
army, they were the front-line infantry or the sappers that cleared the way. In both cases
they were foot soldiers, at the bottom of the military hierarchy.
Three characteristics are encapsulated in the etymology of the word: position (spatial,
social, and intellectual), mobility, and a physical relationship with the environment.
Although a pioneer is, etymologically, a drudge, living a rudimentary, harsh life, the
etymology also includes an idea of movement. Its root is in pedonis, a derivation it
shares with “pedestrian”. This 'person in a state of movement' is, in other words,
displaced. Displaced to another country, another society, new world where they have no
place.
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