Le Club Des Sous L'eau
21 Jun - 08 Sep 2013
LE CLUB DES SOUS L'EAU
21 June - 8 September 2013
By reviving the first deep-sea diving club founded by Jean Painlevé in 1934, Gallien Déjean and Fanny Schulmann pay homage to the father of scientific cinema, whose work intriguated the Surrealists. Le Club des Sous l’Eau [The Underwater Club] becomes an experimental structure in which various protocols, both exhibitions and films, attempt to put to the test the narrative and technological means of displaying and classifying reality.
Jean Painlevé (1902-1989) is considered to be one of the pioneers of scientific cinema. Initially neglected by the scholarly community which deemed cinema to be an inadequate observational tool, he was quickly noticed by the Surrealists who admired the aesthetic and evocative vision of his films. Painlevé’s universe contains a multitude of intertwining (and at times overlooked) aspects: the intersecting of art and science, the use of documentary as a fictional delimitation of the natural, politics (and anti-fascist advocacy), or the production of derivative works reproducing motifs that the filmmaker was obsessed with (seahorses, algae) in the form of fabrics, wallpaper and jewelry.
In 1934, Painlevé founded « Le Club des Sous l’Eau » with Captain Yves Le Prieur. Made of amateurs, inventors, artists and treasure hunters, the association dedicated itself to promoting and developing underwater filming techniques. As the first divers’ club in the world, the group contributed to discovering and domesticating hitherto unknown wildernesses.
In 2012, like a hermit crab taking over the empty shell of an old gastropod, a few people revived « Le Club des Sous l’Eau » by organizing nighttime reunions in bars, diving lessons, film projections, conferences and concerts. The club has now become the place to test the collective methods within an experience, among of which exhibitions are only one of several possible extensions. Film and exhibitions are treated here like reciprocal metaphors: these tools for the presentation and classification of reality are both technological devices intended to preserve the natural kingdom that they themselves have supplanted. The crystallized ruins of this bygone world still sleep in the depths of the subaquatic realm. In order to come back up to the surface, they are waiting for the pearl hunter who will be able to reassemble them into new poetic formations.
The club would like to thank the Documents Cinematographiques, the Service historique de la Défense, the Musée National de la Marine, Born Bad, the Baron Samedi and the Fédération Française d’étude et de sports sous-marins.
G.D., F.S.
CURATORS
Gallien Déjean is an art critic and curator. He teaches art theory and history at ECAL (Lausanne) and supervises post-graduate collective research projects. In Paris, he is one of the active members of Treize, an independent production and exhibition space federating several organisms and curators. He recently organized the first retrospective of the activities of the British group BANK, entitled “Self-Portrait–BANK’s Archives & Relics–1991-2003”, Treize, October 2012.
Fanny Schulmann is an art historian. Having completed studies from the École du Louvre, the Université Paris I – Sorbonne and the Université de Picardie Jules Verne, she is currently working on her thesis about the Situationist International. Recently, she drafted sections of the catalog due to appear on the Guy Debord retrospective at the French National Library, and will also be participating in the symposium taking place during the exhibition. Having been accepted into the Institut national du patrimoine (National Institute for Cultural Heritage), she has been a curator for the Ministry of Culture, Department of the Museums of France since 2012.
In collaboration with the documents cinématographiques (Paris)
In charge of the events: Mathieu Loctin
WITH
Louis Boutan, Jean Comandon, Louis de Corlieu, Stéphane Devidal, Ligia Dias, Philippe Halsman, Geneviève Hamon, Marie Jager, Sachin Kaeley, Yves Le Prieur, Genêt Mayor, Christian Newby, Noyade (Lemoine & Minkkinen), Jean Painlevé, Pierre Paulin, Bruno Persat, Mary Ping, Florian & Michael Quistrebert, Clément Rodzielski, Analia Saban, We Are The Painters, Pedro Wirz (with the collaboration of Christian Rothmaler), Gerda Åkesson
21 June - 8 September 2013
By reviving the first deep-sea diving club founded by Jean Painlevé in 1934, Gallien Déjean and Fanny Schulmann pay homage to the father of scientific cinema, whose work intriguated the Surrealists. Le Club des Sous l’Eau [The Underwater Club] becomes an experimental structure in which various protocols, both exhibitions and films, attempt to put to the test the narrative and technological means of displaying and classifying reality.
Jean Painlevé (1902-1989) is considered to be one of the pioneers of scientific cinema. Initially neglected by the scholarly community which deemed cinema to be an inadequate observational tool, he was quickly noticed by the Surrealists who admired the aesthetic and evocative vision of his films. Painlevé’s universe contains a multitude of intertwining (and at times overlooked) aspects: the intersecting of art and science, the use of documentary as a fictional delimitation of the natural, politics (and anti-fascist advocacy), or the production of derivative works reproducing motifs that the filmmaker was obsessed with (seahorses, algae) in the form of fabrics, wallpaper and jewelry.
In 1934, Painlevé founded « Le Club des Sous l’Eau » with Captain Yves Le Prieur. Made of amateurs, inventors, artists and treasure hunters, the association dedicated itself to promoting and developing underwater filming techniques. As the first divers’ club in the world, the group contributed to discovering and domesticating hitherto unknown wildernesses.
In 2012, like a hermit crab taking over the empty shell of an old gastropod, a few people revived « Le Club des Sous l’Eau » by organizing nighttime reunions in bars, diving lessons, film projections, conferences and concerts. The club has now become the place to test the collective methods within an experience, among of which exhibitions are only one of several possible extensions. Film and exhibitions are treated here like reciprocal metaphors: these tools for the presentation and classification of reality are both technological devices intended to preserve the natural kingdom that they themselves have supplanted. The crystallized ruins of this bygone world still sleep in the depths of the subaquatic realm. In order to come back up to the surface, they are waiting for the pearl hunter who will be able to reassemble them into new poetic formations.
The club would like to thank the Documents Cinematographiques, the Service historique de la Défense, the Musée National de la Marine, Born Bad, the Baron Samedi and the Fédération Française d’étude et de sports sous-marins.
G.D., F.S.
CURATORS
Gallien Déjean is an art critic and curator. He teaches art theory and history at ECAL (Lausanne) and supervises post-graduate collective research projects. In Paris, he is one of the active members of Treize, an independent production and exhibition space federating several organisms and curators. He recently organized the first retrospective of the activities of the British group BANK, entitled “Self-Portrait–BANK’s Archives & Relics–1991-2003”, Treize, October 2012.
Fanny Schulmann is an art historian. Having completed studies from the École du Louvre, the Université Paris I – Sorbonne and the Université de Picardie Jules Verne, she is currently working on her thesis about the Situationist International. Recently, she drafted sections of the catalog due to appear on the Guy Debord retrospective at the French National Library, and will also be participating in the symposium taking place during the exhibition. Having been accepted into the Institut national du patrimoine (National Institute for Cultural Heritage), she has been a curator for the Ministry of Culture, Department of the Museums of France since 2012.
In collaboration with the documents cinématographiques (Paris)
In charge of the events: Mathieu Loctin
WITH
Louis Boutan, Jean Comandon, Louis de Corlieu, Stéphane Devidal, Ligia Dias, Philippe Halsman, Geneviève Hamon, Marie Jager, Sachin Kaeley, Yves Le Prieur, Genêt Mayor, Christian Newby, Noyade (Lemoine & Minkkinen), Jean Painlevé, Pierre Paulin, Bruno Persat, Mary Ping, Florian & Michael Quistrebert, Clément Rodzielski, Analia Saban, We Are The Painters, Pedro Wirz (with the collaboration of Christian Rothmaler), Gerda Åkesson