About:
La Totale is a collaborative project that will take place in two stages. First, a two-week residency at the Studio Orta - Les Moulins, located in the heart of the former Papeteries of Sainte-Marie during August. It will culminate in an exhibition October 14th 2018, in parallel with the FIAC, contemporary art fair in Paris. This event will bring together some forty young multidisciplinary and cosmopolitan artists. It targets a heterogeneous public, regional and international to form a group that wants the most totale. Founded in 2000 by artists Lucy and Jorge Orta in the former Papeteries du Marais, a cradle of the paper industry in France, LES MOULINS is a cultural laboratory. Its ambition is to create a collective environment dedicated to the creation of new forms of contemporary art inspired by the post-industrial landscapes of the valley. Located on 8 km along the river, the four former factories that dominate the complex: The Moulin de Sainte- Marie, Boissy, La Laiterie and La Vacherie. They are gradually transformed into exhibition spaces and workshops to welcome artists from around the world. Les Moulins promotes the reinvention of space and the creation of works inspired by the history of these places.
If the exhibition is called La Totale, it is not by chance, it derives from the term "total work", first defined by Wagner in the nineteenth century. It is born of a nostalgia that the arts no longer communicate with each other and entertain each other separately. It is currently decked out, the image of the concept "coat rack", but all agree on its primary feature, "the desire to meet."
Producing a "total artwork" is not just about combining several techniques, disciplines or media. It is also to encompass the viewer and to merge life and art. This is why the theme of the total artwork is found both in the history of the arts and in the dream of artistically leading one’s life. In contradiction with this utopia, today there are more than 500 fairs of contemporary art per year (including La Fiac). All conceived as commercial events, displaying an international ambition. In response to this reality, our exhibition will bring together people from any creative horizon without an official representative (gallery or institutions) and will be non-profit, non-commercial. As such, it is under the sign of the experience and leaves to its protagonists a real freedom. This exhibition is considered as a space of exchange for the generation of tomorrow. Using the already existing platform (Studio Orta + Galleria Continua), our gathering questions it and feeds it through parallel events.
The project seeks to create new bridges between different generations and cultures. Presenting simultaneously a monumental sculpture by Anish Kapoor with a digital video of a 25-year-old Russian designer while crossing portable habitats in a single day, this is the idea of the project! In conclusion, our idea brings together about forty people coming from countries of "qualification" and from different universes having as a common point a desire to do. Being in the heart of today’s world, our generation, rocked by new media and current social-cultural questioning; are still wondering: "what are we going to be able to do tomorrow ? "
La Totale is an incubator. It is the project of a generation that only wants to create together.
