A HOUSE OF STONE
IN A METROPOLIS
USING ALL AVAILABLE LIGHT
INHABITED BY THOSE WHO INVITE OTHERS
Sébastien Rémy, – Well, you didn’t change the world, did you?
– No, but we changed our street, 2017
Vinyl
Sébastien Rémy’s project revealed the way hospitality brings a consideration of boundaries into play, which require constant negotiation to establish the right distance for drawing the frontiers that will include the other in one’s domain. This consideration of boundaries was almost literally manifest in the form the artist chose: an intervention involving the art centre’s windows. Coloured filters gave a cinematic tint to the exhibition spaces, contaminating the works of the other artists in a way that had to be “negotiated” among them. Rémy’s project was initially motivated by his urge to turn the invitation back on La Galerie by asking for information about its unrealized building initiatives: projects left hanging for lack of time or money. His attention was caught by two projects whose intentions were at variance, not to say contradictory: the construction of an annex for events and relaxed get-togethers, and the installation of electric shutters, mainly for security reasons. He responded to this seeming antithesis by materializing the two projects—via a simulated view of the annexe and representation of shutters on the La Galerie windows— and accompanying them with texts drawn from his own experience and that of other artists, writers and filmmakers that expressed some of the contradictions governing the act of hospitality. Through this project, Rémy also explored the way in which language itself can be considered a locus and a rite of hospitality.