THE
EMERGENCY ROOM
FORMAT
to
www.emergencyrooms.org , central page
Copyright format artist
: Thierry
Geoffroy / Colonel (
contact
+ infos )
Illustration from MOMA / PS1
New York . / Emergency Room Athens ,
Hanoi . Napoli // Room
designer :
Jean de Piepape .
EMERGENCY ROOM is
developed by the artist Thierry
Geoffroy/ COLONEL.
It is an art
format activated in a specially designed space for exhibitions
changing every day, where
professional artists are stimulated to express and rank the most
alarming emergencies of today.
EMERGENCY ROOM is a place where the participating public and the media
meet artists’
intuitive, avant-garde visions of the world. The daily changing
exhibition is generating
artistic experiments and new forms of artistic expression
(AESTHETICS OF
EMERGENCY )
EMERGENCY ROOM is a laboratory for new types for artistic
collaborations across different aesthetic directions, cultural
backgrounds and generations. Approximately 450 professional
artists have participated in EMERGENCY ROOM in
8 institutions including MoMA/ PS1 in New York. More about the
community
behind EMERGENCY ROOM available at:
www.emergencyrooms.org/artists.html
“Normally, an artist has to wait
months or years to create an exhibition because it is necessary to
negotiate with an art institution, find funding etc. This limits the
artist with an urge to respond to the contemporary. Emergency Room is an open space that
gives the artists an opportunity to do just that. Through Emergency
Room, artists can scan the news media or report from their neighborhood
and react to the current debate every day. Some artists are in advance
of the accident .
(Thierry Geoffroy/ COLONEL
ARTISTS - being “in advance of
the broken arm"?
In EMERGENCY ROOM artists are "thermometers " for detecting,
measuring and giving diagnosis of the dysfunctions in the society.
Artists are experts in capturing alarming issues immediately or even in
advance - "in advance of the broken arm". They have the ability
to spot and unveil what may be an issue tomorrow and have important
implications for our future. With their art works they are not only
able to treat emergencies but also to prevent accidents. In order
important artistic visions to reach a large attentive audience as fast
as possible, what artist feel NOW has to be exhibited in real time -
before it is too late.
Illustration
from MOMA / PS1
2007 Emergency
Room New York . / Emergency Room Hanoi and
Paris // Room
designer :
Jean de Piepape .
ARTISTS,
VISITORS AND MEDIAS - A large debating audience meeting around art works
Through EMERGENCY ROOM, artists can (if they wish) react
every day and train collectively their "Awareness Muscle" (as a group,
as an art movement or with the public). By being an exhibition alive,
and commenting on burning events, EMERGENCY ROOM creates proximity to
the public and to the distribution media channels coming. Everyday
there is new angles, alarming discoveries and everyday there will
be new interest for audience to tune back to EMERGENCY ROOM.
Some artist express day after day more and more deep about a case they
tackle . Many of the visitors come several times during the
exhibition perio to follow up the daily change.
The every day turn over in the EMERGENCY ROOM is kept under
documentation and also can be visible . Beside the physical exhibition
what is
exhibited and debated in EMERGENCY ROOM is also distributed on
Internet. In the media the documentation and the debate is both
appearing in external medias but also in EMERGENCY ROOMs own blogs
created every day.
“Artists, audience and media have
been fighting for weeks in order to get to see and participate in the
new and innovating exhibition that with its "art of the news" puts the
art institution itself to debate. Reuters, The New Yorker and the
TV-channel ABC News are some of the leading media that have brought the
story about the original exhibition, and at P.S.1 more than a thousand
visitors per day have been seeing it…"
(Nikolaj M. Lassen, Weekendavisen,
March 30th, 2007)
A GROWING ART MOVEMENT - new types for
collaborations and diversity
By stimulating the immediate artistic expression before the moment has
passed and it’s too late, EMERGENCY ROOM becomes an energy generator
for artists’ engagement . EMERGENCY ROOM is an art format that connects
artists in new constellations across different cultures and art
disciplines. EMERGENCY ROOM deliberately mix different kind of
artist; for instance cross-media artists are sharing space with
abstract painters, sculptors , photographer , with different origins
and ages (biodiversity). The format encourages
artists to collaborate as artist are meeting every day for the passage
and the debate : a Vietnamese artist will start working with a
Danish, a Polish with a Greek, a known artist with a younger, an artist
will collaborate with a researchers, philosophes, journalists ,
detectives , art
historians - all meeting each other under the clock just before
deadline and working together in a shared now . EMERGENCY ROOM is a
rendez-vous.
As a caravan-like platform for moving exhibitions and by activating the
audience and artists from all over the world, EMERGENCY ROOM is a
growing community that creates new connections between the artists.
EMERGENCY ROOM is thus not only a venue for displaying of artworks, but
also as a fast growing movement. Everywhere the format is actualized
the community of EMERGENCY ROOM Artists grows. From earlier
realizations of EMERGENCY ROOM we already have a well-developed
collaborative networks and followers from France, Greece, Italy,
Germany, Vietnam ; USA , Brasil ; South Africa , and other
countries. New artists will thus be involved
in the international artistic environment around EMERGENCY ROOM and
thereby get new international connections. The institution hosting
EMERGENCY ROOM is including its own community of
artists. An on-going collaboration between the participating artists
goes beyond the EMERGENCY ROOM as an event, often affecting the
artists’ praxis.
Delay Museum – Delay Museum Collection
AESTHETICS OF EMERGENCY can be experienced in the Delay Museum
and its collection of artworks, that were once exhibited in the
EMERGENCY ROOM. This collection includes works collected in different
EMERGENCY ROOMs like New York, Athens, Paris,
Berlin, Hanoi, Napoli, Copenhagen and Wroclaw. 450 artists are
represented in the collection and their works where shown in real time,
expressing for example about homophobia in Russia already in 2011 in
Hanoi, financial crises in Greece while Athens was burning in 2007 and
Iraq war in 2007 in MoMA / PS1.
The artworks from the Delay Museum collection can be organized by the
institution curators in different ways and be read through different
topics like global war, xenophobia, financial crisis, global warming,
Iran- USA relationship, North and South Korea and surveillance society.
The works can also be classified by aesthetic methods (for example only
work done in collaborations or work only done by abstract painters,
expressing in outrage and precise way), geographically and time-based
(around specific events, like Arab Spring, financial crises etc.) In
this way a curator can make an exhibition with works borrowed from
Delay Museum showing what happened at the time of artwork production
and evaluating the pertinence of the artistic expression.
Physically the Delay Museum can be constructed as a specially built
room (like at European Culture Congress in Wroclaw) or integrated in
the all ready existing architecture of the institution like at MOMA
/PS1. Even an insertion of Delay Museum artworks in the permanent
collection of the museum is possible going in dialogue .
Other
formats
A part from EMERGENCY ROOM
Thierry Geoffroy/ COLONEL has over the years developed new art formats all
aiming at developping the Awareness Muscle : Critical Run, Protest
Fashion, HQ Biennalist , slow dance debate ..... Those other format as
complementary to ER .
The
EMERGENCY ROOM consist of 4 different spaces:
Two physical buildings:
1)The main building of EMERGENCY ROOM
where artists exhibit their work every day at 12.30 sharp. A round room
specially designed to encourage the debate around the art
works. Connected to the main room there would ideally be a
backstage room where artists can warm up and prepare.
2)The Delay Museum, an
exhibition
space where the audience can experience what has been exposed in the
EMERGENCY ROOM the previous days and months. This museum is no longer
ultracontemporary like in EMERGENCY ROOM but will be “ en RETARD”
in French RETARD means DELAY. This “delay” of opinions, where
past reactive interpretations are preserved, is a critical way of
thinking about contemporary art. The Delay Museum is also a place for
studying the aesthetics of the emergency.
3) Media
spaces
An Internet blog and a web TV
channel, both connected to the social media and daily circulating the
expressions of the artists. To have an own media platform is a
way of creating a dynamic catalog and discussion platform, globally
accessible.
4) Excursions
Emergency Room organise some excursions in the public spaces outside
the museum , like Emergency Mobile formats , or the Critical Runs
, debate raves etc ...
Some of the
important moments in Emergency Room before activation
-Aggreement
- Research and meeting with the local artistic community ,(also art
historians and curators , writers) . EMERGENCY ROOM has some rules for
participating
- Sketches and
construction of the specially
designed EMERGENCY ROOM, Delay Museum and back stage
room.
- Establishment of Internet
medias and possible collaboration with allready established media
.
Some of the
important moments in Emergency Room during activation
- Interviewing the
artists between 12.15 and 12.30, while the artists are on their way to
show the
artworks at EMERGENCY ROOM, short video-interviews are conducted
capturing their burning thoughts in the pulsing moment .
- Installation of artworks.
Every
day at 12.30 sharp in the EMERGENCY ROOM the artists exhibit
artworks
about the very last developments of alarming issues exposing a
diagnosis on current topics. The exhibition from today replaces the
exhibition from yesterday the change of exhibition is called “The
Passage” as it is punctual and a daily rendezvous with the artist
and the audience . This
is also a moment when collaborative work happens. The artists
decide together about the distribution of the artworks in the shared
space taking in consideration the pertinence and the level of emergency
in each artwork.
- The debate . Every day, once
installed, the artworks get debated ( around 12.50 pm ) and the debate
is
documented .
The public and the medias can daily witness the passage
and also take part of the debate .
- The exhibition. The new art
works are on display 24 hours and can be seen be public and visitors
until the next day 12.30 . Once the debate around the art works are
finnished the exhibition can be experience with calm ( at Pan Napoli
debates could take 3 hours , in New york at Moma / PS1 was more 45
minutes duration )
-In the afternoon ,once the debate is over the curatorial team
update the Delay Museum.
exhibition , selecting which art work from yesterday will join in .
-The team register the art works and the documentation os organized
The Delay Museum in Wroclaw
was constructed beside centanial Hall to
show the 4 days work production from the
Emergency
Room that was build on the other side
History :
Emergency Room has been activated at MOMA/PS1 / New
York,
2007 ;
Berlin, Galerie Olaf Stueber 2006 ;
Copenhagen
, Nikolaj Contemporary
2006
;
Athens,
Ileana Tounta Contemporary art center
2007 ; Napoli ,
PAN
2009 ;
Paris,Galerie
Taïss (2008 ), in Hanoi at the university of fine art (oct-nov
2009) and again in 2011 ; in
Wroclaw Polish European Presidency
2011.
Terminology:
AESTHETICS OF
EMERGENCY
Passage
Awareness
Delay
Theses and other words related
to the concept are published in the EMERGENCY ROOM- from the Dictionary
Future
Aim /
Visions:
- Every large city should have
a permanent Emergency Room to bring contemporary art in the now
- What is exhibited in the
Emergency Room and of an alarm value should be broadcasted
in the news like an artist weather report forcast about coming
dysfunctions
- An education center to train
the Awareness Muscle and to teach the Ultracontemporary should be
established.
back to
www.emergencyrooms.org