The city is a living entity, constantly remodelling to reflect its mutations [social, economic, identity, geographical] ever more rapid and complex.
In its good and bad sides, the city is constantly feeding the thinkers and artists’ imagination. From this imagination sprout proposals, new visions that question, criticize and suggest new ways of living together.
The plurality of visions transforms reality and creates new utopian or dystopian worlds. While Utopia offers interpretation of an ideal and flawless world where an individual community lives happily and harmoniously. Dystopia or counter-Utopia, on the contrary, gives the nightmarish vision of an organized society that prevents its members from achieving “happiness”.
Between utopias and dystopias, the city is founded upon and evolves through the thought of Man. It is a fragile ecosystem where any change in the landscape could potentially jeopardize balance and social peace.
Densification of the urban landscape over the years has raised many questions and serious concerns, particularly in light of the defragmentation of the social interactions with the massive virtualization of human relationships. It is also our relationship to nature, ecological issues, and every one’s place which are the subjects of a constant reflection.
In art, utopia as dystopia is expressed through various forms of expression such as literature, film, architecture or comics. This type of story has been known since antiquity, with Plato, and continues as a way to criticize or propose new ways for living together.
Artists, by seizing this language, emphasize what’s missing in a society to be perfect, or highlight effects that, were they to continue, would cause chaos.
The exhibition Polistopia presents 12 artists // visual artists, video artists, photographers, architects, performers // - // French and foreign // who question, through real or imaginary / utopian or dystopian points of views, our complex relationship with the urban space.
Curators: Marie-Cécile Berdaguer / Margalit Berriet