Élodie Moirenc
Élodie Moirenc is an Astérides Resident in 2000 and 2001. The archives of Triangle-Astérides do not allow for the determination of the exact dates or the duration of this residency in 2000 and 2001.
Élodie Moirenc was born in 1969 in Aix-en-Provence (France), she lives and works in Marseille (France).
“Actuel Club presents itself as an open, welcoming space, within which a diversity of small zones intersect. The artist used the partitions provided by Marc Etienne to construct their articulation. These display tools function in the installation as zones to be located, that is, inhabited according to the rhythms of the contexts they evoke (those of art, leisure, entertainment). In this eclectic yet precisely composed universe, this module—characteristic of a median space between domestic partition and theater backdrop—defines and sets into motion environments populated with objects of bright colors and recognizable forms. Even if sometimes their construction is imprecise in relation to the referenced object (impressionistic or artificial), each form carries meaning in relation to the space it occupies. Their spatial arrangement draws from several registers of practice: a naturalistic context (crepe paper rock pouf, foil ribbon foliage), a decorative utopia (distorted scale, profusion, artificial colors), a recreational cluster combining design, festivity, play, and sport (balls, punching bag, garlands, costumes, hats, plates), and finally, a discursive space (information, revelation, advice), all of which interact with one another.
In other words, Élodie Moirenc calls upon the theatrical stage, a space grounded in collective and “spectacular” experience. The metaphor is realized in the presence of fundamental elements of both the Italian-style theater and the modern stage: backdrop frames, decoration, perspective, illusion that creates a break between stage and audience; a three-dimensional playing area for the actor that fosters contact with the spectator. The same rhetorical device appears in the way the space and objects either take into account or ignore the presence of the viewer, in terms of circulation, accessibility, and sensory engagement. Certain areas of Actuel Club encourage the viewer’s potential to be active in navigating the installation, while others support a more contemplative posture.
Yet despite all the enchantment surrounding them, the objects remain empty, fragile, false, anchoring the whole within the realm of pure illusion. They thus directly return the viewer to themselves and to their own questions about their perception of reality, what they wish to understand or make of it, how they will engage their body (a glorious body or a gleaner’s body?) either in virtuosity or, conversely, in desublimation.
Through Actuel Club, the artist employs subterfuge to display, within a contemporary art space, manufactured objects made from humble, accessible, and inexpensive materials drawn from everyday life, thereby asserting the paradox that underpins their status. Ordinary activities or artistic creations? Although the ensemble is installed as a multi-activity club stand and the character of the objects leans toward the sample, the prototype, the common, the whole retains the value of an artist’s work, as the “amateuse” who conceived and crafted it—“one who loves, searches, and cultivates”—asserts her profession to be artistic practice.
By presenting as professional an activity one might undertake “to stay busy, avoid boredom, and have fun,” Élodie Moirenc’s work sparks reflection on notions she easily links to art but also to daily life, to leisure but also to labor, in a pursuit of well-being connected to her own body and environment.”
Text by Nadine Maurice, excerpt from the catalogue La partie cachée de l’iceberg, Ateliers d’artistes, Office de la Culture, Marseille, August 2000.