'' One year sabbatical war | A history of performance art on the Riviera from 1951 until now

One year sabbatical war

Free tags: 
Protestation
Voyage
Creator: 
Hervé Courtain
Performer: 
Hervé Courtain
Producer: 
Hervé Courtain
Website: 
//courtain.herve.free.fr/s_page14b_villa_guerre_sab.html
Occurence: 
Objets: 

Les documents rapportés de mes voyages, mes notes, des reliques, des photos, mes travaux préparatoires, des dessins, des objets et mes productions secrètes correspondant à cette période conservés dans mes cahiers N° 3 et 4, fonds Hervé Courtain

Technique description référence: 
Les documents rapportés de mes voyages, mes notes, des reliques, des photos, mes travaux préparatoires, des dessins, des objets et mes productions secrètes correspondant à cette période conservés dans mes cahiers N° 3 et 4, fonds Hervé Courtain
Description: 
I find that all artistic machines in Nice and my approach to all these machines are too well-oiled. I decide to go on strike ...
For a year, I boycott openings, pieces of nonsense and workshops.
During the sabbatical year I dream, I travel into the future and I come back and I regress and then I go again. I play cards and time passes.

I shuffle the cards. Stored in the notebook "Travaux Pratiques “ N° 3

I travel: London, Berlin, Madrid, Salamanca, Bilbao, Oviedo, Turin, Paris, Chantilly. I discover Chillida, Richard Serra, Pablo Siquier Juan Manuel Diaz-Caneja, Antonio Saura, Max Beckmann, Peter Blake, Michael Landy. Relics are preserved in the book "Travaux Pratiques “ N° 4

During that year off I do not stay without doing anything, I’m a strike-breaker when I violate the rule that I had self-imposed.

When I meet someone who asks me what I do now my answer is "I'm on strike". In general there is no second question like, "Oh, and why? ", " In what context? ", " Since when? ".

What impact can have the strike of an artist? A self-proclaimed artist on top of that.

No, the statement is so incongruous that most of my interlocutors skip it without (apparently) asking themselves the question of the meaning of what they just heard and they move on.
The first questions that should come to mind are: the absence of who, of what, in what place and why?
I wonder how often visual artists, painters, sculptors, students (other artistic subjects know what the word strike means) went on strike within working circumstances.

During the Guerre sabbatique (Sabbatical ar) I move and I work in secret, surreptitiously.

"I felt I went in all the directions, where I was attracted by the journey. Directions towards past productions, towards mine, towards those of known or little known artists, towards other civilizations, towards other currents. An explorer of unknown lands, I saw some exhibition places , some expression modes , some very different sensitivities. I put myself in danger, forward, backward. I traveled through reading, through writing, by my meetings, by the lack, by doing, by the defeat, by lack of expertise, by my senses, by my feelings through my successes and my aesthetic or creative failures. I wanted to explore the journey in the present, knowing that it would precede me more than I would like.The place where I have not managed to get in is the future. I definitely understood that the future is being built now, in the vanguard, it is difficult when one is placed at the rearguard”. Off screen reflections.
''