From One Revolution to Another
Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France
Curated by Jeremy Deller, the Palais de Tokyo’s ‘From One Revolution to Another’ is a multi-faceted and joyful ode to creativity and spontaneity. Invited to curate a show within the institution’s ‘Carte Blanche’ exhibition series, which began last year with Ugo Rondinone, Deller has brought his ongoing investigation into democracy, self-representation and pop phenomena to Paris. Organized in groups of archives, the exhibition display sits between a museum of contemporary social culture and an autonomous presentation of objects and attitudes that are intentionally not classified as ‘art’.
The main hall is entirely occupied by the notable ‘Folk Archive’ project (1999-2005), a collection of objects and ephemera that documents an incredible range of reactions to official celebrations of British culture at the turn of the millennium. Hanging from the ceiling of the large exhibition space are dozens of banners, produced for political demonstrations over the last 20 years by Ed Hall, which stand like a parade of rage, craftsmanship and derision. At turns naïve and obscene, this cacophony of inventiveness and reactionary spirit is a test-bed for how vital and contradictory common feelings towards the globalization and the politics of identity are today.
The remaining rooms host other multi-media displays that can be seen as autonomous exhibitions, though they all form a coherent statement about the birth of specific cultural phenomena: the beginning of rock in France; early Soviet experiments in sound and music; the proletarian background of British popular music (with a particular eye on glam rock); and the use of art techniques in therapeutic approaches. Every section – developed in collaboration with a number of artists, writers and theoreticians including Scott King, Matthew Higgs, Alan Kane, Marc Touché, Matt Price and Andrei Smirnov – can be read as different chapters of a larger book about creativity as a matter of urgency. At least, a book about love.
If the ‘90s were all about post-colonial perspectives, this seems to be the consecration of a post-cultural studies approach: the end of a hierarchical and cynical appropriation of aspects of low culture as a dandyish, false critical attitude. ‘From One Revolution to Another’ does not even ‘appropriate’ things because it doesn’t rely on a tradition of exploitation but, on the contrary, threatens popular phenomena in their original meaning and dignity. And it doesn’t ask the viewer for any elated and oblivious form of participation.
Alessandro Rabottini
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