For an invisual, unheard, unaesthetic, unworked, non-identitarian, plural art…

Discussion with Jean-Claude Moineau’s Latest Book: For an Invisual, Unheard, Unaesthetic, Unworked, Non-Identitarian, Plural Art…

While it can be introduced, the book by art theorist Jean-Claude Moineau is hardly summarizable.

After several years of work and two years of back-and-forth between revisions and rewritings, the team that has gathered around the book For an Invisual, Unheard, Unaesthetic, Unworked, Non-Identitarian, Plural Art… is pleased to announce that Jean-Claude Moineau’s book will be released, or rather, will make its debut this May 2023.

To mark this occasion, the Paris Biennale is organizing a launch conference on Tuesday, May 23, 2023, online, at 7 PM, with the author and the team present.

Currently available exclusively in PDF format, this book with an extended title is Jean-Claude Moineau’s new work. The author, somewhat reclusive in recent years after an initial « disappearance » (and a first « re-focusing » post-68 « left » entirely on theory) from the art world—both « official » and supposedly « parallel »—due to health issues following a heart attack and a stroke after his retrospective at the ex-General, which now prevent him from attending art events or accessing public libraries, including his own monumental library, which makes his apartment a true library-apartment (like his books, this one included, are real « library-books »), is now unable to consult them in the nursing home where he has resigned himself to finding refuge.

The book was written under the most difficult circumstances, but not without a certain humor directed both at his « peers » and himself. It strives to rethink the Paris Biennale as it has been reappropriated by artists following the initiative of Romanian-born artist Alexandre Gurita, who relocated it on a global scale, both Western and non-Western.

Jean-Claude Moineau’s personal hypothesis aims to revalue the concept of utility, suggesting that, in « the art world » opened by the Paris Biennale once (many times) rethought from top to bottom, against the modernist ready-made, it is not so much the « spectators » but rather the simple « users » who could endow any thing or non-thing, not with artistic (and even less aesthetic) character to the detriment of its use, but with new uses not necessarily considered « artistic. »

With the participation of Jean-Claude Moineau, Aurore Chevallier Gleizes, Alexandre Gurita, and Paul Navas.

For an Invisual, Unheard, Unaesthetic, Unworked, Non-Identitarian, Plural Art… by Jean-Claude Moineau. Published by Biennale de Paris, ISBN: 2-900176-05-0. Digital publication: Paris, May 2023.

More information: ed AT biennaledeparis.fr

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