November, 11 – December, 10. «Cahiers d’Artistes» collection in Moscow

For more than 30 years, the Swiss Cultural Foundation Pro Helvetia has supported the publication of contemporary artists’ initial monographs with the Collection Cahiers d’Artistes. From 11 November to 10 December, the archive will be presented during the “Extended Cahiers” exhibition, initiated by Pro Helvetia Moscow and realised in collaboration with the GROUND Art Centre.

No fewer than 142 Cahiers d’artistes have been studied since the launch of the project in 1984, which permits artists to publish an initial monograph. This wide selection includes names such as Peter Fischli & David Weiss, Pipilotti Rist or Lang & Baumann. With its Collection Cahiers d’Artistes, Pro Helvetia enables aspiring Swiss artists the publication of an initial monograph to their name. Once every two years, based on the recommendation of a specialist jury, the Swiss Arts Council selects eight artists out of those who have followed a call for applications. The monographs are designed in close cooperation with the artists themselves. For the artists, this represents a unique opportunity to make their work – underscored with a professionally written text – better known to the international art. In addition, the Collection Cahiers d’Artistes enables Pro Helvetia to publicise trends in the contemporary Swiss arts scene both at home and abroad. The series was launched by the Arts Council in 1984 and has been published by Edizioni Periferia since 2006. The online platform for the Collection Cahiers d’Artistes has been created in 2015 at www.cahiers.ch. The website contains additional information about the artists of the past and current series and makes all the monographs published over more than 30 years available in digitised form.

The “Extended Cahiers” exhibition at the GROUND Art Centre in Moscow provides the occasion to show this very large material and digital archive of Swiss contemporary art trends. The presentation of all of the publications featured in these past 30 years, realised by the independent curator Madeleine Amsler and by Patrick Gosatti, in charge of the Cahiers project, is conceived as a living apparatus, a dynamic and branched extension of images in space and on the walls. Imagined as an extended book, such a presentation intends to highlight the topicality of the archive as well as its reactivation potential. Besides the presentation of the original publications, the hanging presents an abundant selection of images, photographs, impressions taken from numerous pages of the Cahiers d’Artistes as well as artistic actions specially realised for this exhibition. In this perspective, the artists Gilles Furtwängler (Cahier 2017) and Delphine Chapuis Schmitz (Cahier 2015) realise in collaboration a performance work conceived for the occasion. A video programme based on the archive completes the presentation of the Collection Cahiers d’Artistes. Besides the presentation of the archive, this event is likewise an important occasion for the presentation of the latest 2017 edition with the publications from Gina Folly, Gilles Furtwängler, Mathis Gasser, Charlotte Herzig, Karin Hueber, Florence Jung, Yves Scherer and Hagar Schmidhalter.

A discussions day is organised for 11 November, the date of the exhibition vernissage. The artists Gilles Furtwängler and Delphine Chapuis Schmitz, as well as the curators Denis Pernet, Madeleine Amsler and Patrick Gosatti, will exchange ideas and debate approaches related to the contemporary archive with cultural actors based in Moscow. Publisher and chief editor of Ad Marginem Press publishing house Mikhail Kotomin, art-critic Sergey Khachaturov, performance artist Olga Kroytor are among the participants.

The Collection Cahiers d’Artistes archive will be the point of departure of discussions that will be developed concerning the artistic production, the edition and its relationship with the performance as well as the role, function and contemporary development of the critical discourse.

“Extended Cahiers”, exhibition from 11 November to 10 December 2017 at the GROUND Art Centre in Moscow: Novopeschanaya str. 23/7.

Vernissage and discussions day on 11 November.

November, 11

15.00 – 16.30 Discussion: Publishing, self-publishing, micro-publishing

Participants:
Denis Pernet, independent curator
Delphine Chapuis Schmitz, artist, Cahiers d’Artistes
Patrick Gosatti, curator Cahiers d’Artistes, Pro Helvetia Zurich
Mikhail Kotomin, Ad Marginem Press Publishing House
Sergei Khachatourov, art-critic
Denis Kryukov, independent zine and small press publisher, writer

17.00 – 17.30 Performance by Delphine Chapuis Schmitz & Gilles Furtwängler

18.00 – 19.30 Discussion: Performance and Publishing

Participants:
Madeleine Amsler, independent curator
Gilles Furtwängler, artist, Cahiers d’Artistes
Olga Kroytor, artist
Daria Demekhina, philosopher
Arseniy Sregeev, artist, curator