New Boltanski Show

Other Resources: Christian Boltanski (Tate Magazine) Christian Boltanski: Réflexion (Museum of Fine Art, Boston) Christian Boltanski, Monument Odessa (1991, Spencer Museum of Art) Christian Boltanski, Autel De Lycée Chases (1988, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles) Christian Boltanski, Monument (1989, Hirshhorn Museum) Christian Boltanski Images (Artnet.com)

Raphaël Garrigos and Isabelle Roberts had an article (Boltanski Art sur image, January 19) in Libération on the latest show from French artist Christian Boltanski. The exhibit, called 6 septembres, was at the Société d'encouragement pour l'industrie nationale in Paris through January 28. The show is part of the special exhibit series Les intrus from the Musée de l'Art Moderne, which is closed for renovations (see my review of the Annette Messager show in the same series).

The idea is simple, to compile television and historical images occurring on September 6, 1944 (when Boltanski was born) and every subsequent September 6 through 2004. Although Boltanski apparently did not know that his latest video project would be shown there, the building that houses the SEIN was where the Lumière brothers showed the first moving picture, La sortie des usines Lumière, on March 22, 1895. The work was created at the invitation of the Institut national de l'audiovisuel, which wanted more of its extraordinary archive to be explored and made available to the public. From the article in Libération:

Two years ago, Christian Boltanski went to survey the ground: "The INA is an extraordinary place, very Borges-like: slightly ugly concrete buildings; there is even a room there where ten channels are taped 24 hours a day." For him whose work has always revolved around memory, a mine of the trails left by people as they disappear. At first Boltanski felt around, beginning by typing "with clumsy fists" on the INA computers with the idea of gathering images of handshakes. "I work on anonymous memory, the 'little memory' as I call it; I was looking for a way to bind myself with the INA archives, and then I found the way inside, something really stupid, my birthdate."

You can see seven stills from the video at the INA site.