For an Invisual, Unheard-of, Inaesthetic, Unworked, Non-Identitarian, Plural Art…
An event marking the launch of Jean-Claude Moineau’s latest book, For an Invisual, Unheard-of, Inaesthetic, Unworked, Non-Identitarian, Plural Art…
While art theorist Jean-Claude Moineau’s book lends itself to an introduction, it hardly lends itself to a summary.
After several years of work and two years of back-and-forth between rereading and rewriting, the team assembled around For an Invisual, Unheard-of, Inaesthetic, Unworked, Non-Identitarian, Plural Art… is delighted to announce that Jean-Claude Moineau’s book will see the light of day—or tentatively reveal its first pages—this May 2023.
To mark the occasion, the Biennale de Paris is organising an online book launch on Tuesday, May 23, 2023, at 7 p.m., with the author and the team.
Direct link to join the online event: https://zoom.us/j/6186595730
Currently available exclusively as a PDF, this new book with its lengthy title marks the return of Jean-Claude Moineau, who had once again somewhat disappeared from the art world in recent years. Following an initial “disappearance” and a first “refocusing” after 1968, turning “hard left” towards theory, he has this time withdrawn from both the “official” and the supposedly “alternative” art worlds because of health problems.
Having suffered a heart attack and a stroke following his retrospective at the former La Générale, he can no longer attend or wander through art events, nor can he access public libraries or his own monumental library. The latter makes his home a veritable “library-apartment”, just as his books—including this one, despite everything—constitute veritable “library-books”. From the residential care home where he has resigned himself to seeking refuge, this library has become inaccessible to him.
Written under extremely difficult circumstances, yet not without a certain humour directed at both his “peers” and himself, this book seeks to rethink the Biennale de Paris as artists have reclaimed it at the initiative of Alexandre Gurita, a Romanian-born artist who has relocated its activities across the world, both within and beyond the West.
Jean-Claude Moineau seeks to restore value to the notion of usefulness. His hypothesis is that, within the “art world” opened up by a Biennale de Paris rethought from the ground up—and repeatedly—ordinary “users” would replace “spectators”. In contrast to the modernist ready-made, they could give any thing or non-thing new uses, not necessarily regarded as “artistic”, rather than confer an artistic—and still less an aesthetic—character upon it at the expense of its use.
With the participation of Jean-Claude Moineau, Aurore Chevallier Gleizes, Alexandre Gurita and Paul Navas.
For an Invisual, Unheard-of, Inaesthetic, Unworked, Non-Identitarian, Plural Art…, by Jean-Claude Moineau. Éditions Biennale de Paris. ISBN: 2-900176-05-0. Digital publication: Paris, May 2023.