Festival des Urbaines (2008)

Curating Les Urbaines, a festival based on emerging art tendencies, is as much about finding new underground networks or ’outsider’ artists as it is about continuing to question the ever changing statements and aesthetics of the festival. In 2008, in order to explore new dynamics, I decided to present a festival entirely curated by artists.
If you think of a contemporary creation like a rain forest, you can ask an ethnologist to introduce you to it’s peripheral populations, but if you already know which specific part of the forest you want to explore, you can also be guided by the indigenous people. A professional curator will know the theoretical background and the overall landscape of the arts fairly well. Artists, on the other hand, needn’t necessarily have those skills, but they do tend to be very inspired when it comes to exploring the very precise field they are working in.

As a result of this, 2008 projects were both very fresh and politically engaging.



Patrick de Rham