Gestes

This research is rooted in a questioning of the binary view of the world held by Western thought, which tends to categorise, separate and reject rather than connect, bring together and embrace. This vision of the world expresses itself as much in a rupture between the idea and the doing, as between knowledge and gesture, nature and culture, or the city and the rural world. Moving away from these distinctions towards an approach that encourages porosity and exchange, many thinkers and artists are proposing new ways of seeing and interacting with the world. In the late nineteenth century, at a time marked by the beginnings of industrialisation, William Morris, founder of the Arts & Craft movement, sought to reconcile the artist, the craftsman and the peasant. Reacting to the social transformations underway and the disfiguration of the environment, he called for a deep-rooted approach, drawing on the past and the crafts of the land to help shape the future. In the face of machines and progress, the redefinition of traditional craftsmanship and the art of ornament appears to be a possible alternative. Drawing on traditional know-how and reconnecting with the natural environment, these artist-craftspeople are putting forward a concrete response that is already tinged with ecological thinking. This desire to merge art and craft, blurring the boundary between work and object, is a form of alternative history of modernity that has a particular resonance in contemporary creation.

A choreography of gestures deployed throughout the region

Gestures are much more than the movement of the hand or the driving force behind creations; they are the movement of the world and history, of being and matter. Gestures are active witnesses to the history of humanity: they form the link between tradition and innovation, between the human being and the tool that the philosopher Ivan Illich called for. Each one consists of manipulating, transforming, creating, acting on what surrounds us. Weaving, braiding, carding, spinning, assembling, trimming, knitting, smearing, flouring, moulding... so many verbs that sketch out the multiplicity and plasticity of the gesture. Because of their ephemeral nature, gestures exist above all in the memory of those who performed them: their richness is continually being passed on, reiterated and transformed.

Against a backdrop of strong ecological concerns and a questioning of our lifestyles, these practices embody an approach on the part of artists that intersects both plastic and societal issues, exploring new imaginaries within a broader definition of the artist.

Like them, the various proposals in the programme (exhibitions, creative residencies, performances), which will be rolled out between 2025 and 2027 in the Occitanie region and at Les Abattoirs in Toulouse, are all openings onto the links between the artist and the craftsman and the porosity of their histories and practices. Together, these projects contribute to the creation of a repertoire of gestures rooted in the culture and history of the region: like contemporary revivals of the Arts & Craft movement and its successors, these invitations to artists are encounters with vernacular know-how. They are made possible by partnerships forged in the Occitanie region, around glassblowing (Le transfo, Aulon, Hautes-Pyrénées), basketry (Château du Bartas, Saint-Georges, Gers), or felt (Maison des Arts Claude et George Pompidou, Cajarc, Lot), all of which reinterpret and update a whole history of making. Bridges and fruitful dialogues lay the foundations for new aesthetics and counter-models of production.

As well as sketching out a map of the region's know-how, this programme celebrates the creativity and performativity of gesture. It invites us to free ourselves from the idea of borders, to see and interact with the world in a different way.

Les Abattoirs dedicate this programme to our colleague William Gourdin (1970 - 2024), who was in charge of disseminating exhibitions and regional initiatives.

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