REPOhistory (1989 – 2000)

This PhD proposal begin with the gathering of the words of the artists, activists, writers, teachers belonging to the group REPOhistory (1989 – 2000), and the examination of the archives preserved at the Fales Library Special Collections at the University of New York.

REPOhistory implemented strategies related to the writing and transmission of historical narratives using visual, participative or collective means. They sought to bring forgotten elements to light that had been concealed as a result of historiographical strategies and unofficial narratives and attempted to restore them to the public spaces of New York City. Consequently, by committing themselves politically in public spaces, they consciously chose to take action outside conventional museum spaces in order to propagate art in the most frequented spaces of the public at large. This will lead to the questioning of the implementation of curatorial practice, its procedures and developments by removing ourselves from institutional frameworks, engendering an overall questioning of the practices of the exhibition process.

Bénédicte le Pimpec is an independent curator, researcher and writer based in Geneva (CH). She is interested in the exhibition format outside of institutional context, the curator as a producer and the relationship between art and public spaces. She worked for several artist run spaces as well as for institutions such as Palais de Tokyo (Paris), FMAC (Geneva), Kunsthaus Langenthal, Mumbai Art Room (Bombay) or Piano Nobile (Geneva). She was curator in residence at The Darling Foundry (Montreal), Das Weiss Haus (Vienna) and Asterides (Marseille). She runs Bermuda, a space for research and production in contemporary art and architecture located in Sergy (FR). Recent projects include a curatorial research project focused on contextual issues of long-term artwork loans from the collection of the National center for visual arts in Paris and Faire, faire faire, ne pas faire, a book examining the modes of execution in contemporary art from the viewpoint of production, by means of a series of eighteen artist’s interviews (head of research project: Ileana Parvu, in collaboration with art historians Jean-Marie Bolay and Valérie Mavridorakis) to be published in 2021.