Conferences at the French Institute of London Jan/Feb 2020

1>A.I. IS US

Joanna Bryson, Sophie Hackford & Cyril de Commarque

chaired by Donna Lu

TALK Thursday 30th of January 2020 at 20.20pm
Artificial Intelligence is often considered as something outside of ourselves – but is it not rather a part of us? Recent developments lead us to wonder whether we will one day ditch our devices and connect our brains directly to a Cloud of knowledge and data. The boundaries between natural and artificial are blurred, as we wonder whether we’ll all soon become digital beings.
With:

Chaired by Donna Lu, Technology Reporter, New Scientist

2>The Seventh Continent and Now?

Nicolas Bourriaud & Cyril de Commarque

TALK Monday 10th of February 2020 7pm

Join Nicolas Bourriaud, founder of the Palais de Tokyo
 in Paris, and current director of the Mo.Co museum in Montpellier. Curator of the Istanbul Biennial 2019, entitled The Seventh Continent, Nicolas Bourriaud invited artists
 to ‘explore this territory where humans and non-humans, machines, waste, animal life and trees are colluding to produce new forms.’ The plastic floating created a sort
 of new continent in the middle of the Pacific, a mass 
that is the ‘embodiment of the Anthropocene’. He will be introduced by artist Cyril de Commarque whose current exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery, Artificialis evokes this duality between the Anthropocene and the progressive intrusion of the artificial in humans life and art.

3>Ecology and Utopia

From Cities to Spheres

Eva Franch i Gilabert & Cyril de Commarque

TALK Wednesday 26th of February 2020 7pm

Cyril de Commarque in conversation with Eva Franch I Gilabert, director of AA School of Architecture.

Architecture constantly pushes us to reimagine how
 we want to live together. From outer space capsules to submarine systems, utopias have taken us into faraway places and futures. Today’s climate emergency, social unrest and political instability demand us to think of
a closer utopia, one that is able to help us rethink immediate futures, and immediate contexts. French 
artist Cyril de Commarque invites Catalan architect
 and curator Eva Franch i Gilabert, director of the Architectural Association School in London, to discuss and present a series of projects, visions and positions that can help us expand our horizons.

 
 

Talks on Fluxland

London Jun 2016

Sculpture, performance and talks: A series of conversations have been organized on board, to explore the relation between progress, politics and utopia. Speakers invited by Cyril de Commarque in partnership with Art Review, were: Fatima Bhutto, Elif Shafak, Héctor Abad Faciolince, Adam Thirlwell, Pankaj Mishra, Sophie Hackford, Sonia Trigueros. Talks were chaired by Mark Rappolt, editor of Art Review and Cyril de Commarque.

Fluxland have been a platform for engagement, contemplation and creation: a moving sculpture on the surface of London’s iconic river.

1>Violence & progress

Fatima Bhutto, Elif Shafak & Héctor Abad Faciolince 

2>The perception of progress from Voltaire to Rousseau

Mark Rappolt, Adam Thirlwell & Pankaj Mishra

3>Science, consciousness & progress - nanotechnology

Sophie Hackford & Sonia Trigueros 

Fluxland will embark on the journey from its shipyard docking in Holland, arriving in London in June 2016. As it travels, Fluxland will reflect the images of passing political, economic, and artistic landmarks: Tate Modern, Southbank Centre, the Palace of Westminster and the buildings in the City of London.

The performative act of entering the city, reflecting the buildings across its mirrored surfaces as it passes through London, sets the stage for Fluxland’s series of performances to take place in September along the River Thames.

The mirrored surfaces of the work have been chosen to encourage viewers to self-reflect, as Cyril de Commarque explains: “There are two ways to experience progress and politics: being an active participant or a victim. In this work I want to encourage viewers to accept that we are responsible for the consequences of our daily actions: we cannot have future generation pay for the privilege of our current comforts. Human beings possess an incredible capacity to reinvent themselves. By creating a butterfly effect we can spark ideas that can bring about an acceleration of progress, tapping into a new renaissance.”

 
“Art has the power to shape a better society, education toward the idea of freedom”
— Joseph Beuys