The Whole Show (Clément Caignart)
Clément Caignart for The Whole Show is an Astérides Resident in 2014.
“The very burning and critical question of social emancipation in capitalism today raises theoretical and practical issues that one can imagine to be numerous. We propose to revisit what constitutes the very social and historical specificity of production mechanisms and forms of consciousness in capitalism, in order to understand the intrinsic, determining, and reflexive relationships that indeed exist between forms of subjectivity and forms of social relations.
Through the critique of the dominant modern paradigm of the dynamics of social relations, which invents and articulates its own categories of critical analysis: communication, knowledge, power, and reason, we wish to problematize the underlying logic of the social and economic framework in which the vast majority—if not the entirety—of people of our generation were born, which they have integrated and naturalized, and which, by default, paradoxically appears to constitute a kind of theoretical and practical horizon, and, furthermore, one that is paradoxically insurmountable.
The entire challenge, therefore, is to bring out, in the negative, the essence of capitalism through the critique of the socio-historically specific fundamental categories of capitalism and through the critique of the forms under which they appear in action. As Bertolt Brecht said, it is not dangerous to fail to perceive all the links in the chains that bind us, but it is indeed dangerous not to perceive the chains themselves. The critical dialogue, therefore carried by, in some measures, documentary cinema, theater, texts, and oral dialogues, allows us openly to share as many points of view and experiences as there are facets of these chains with which we are—and have all implicitly but firmly been—attached. In other words, it is no longer only about showing the chains of labor, but also the chains of work.
We wish to make this awareness, at the very least, as effective and reflective as possible. Under these conditions, we therefore consider the challenge of shaping a theoretical and critical discourse, radical and contemporary, on social emancipation in capitalism, as being a little, and only a little, about its concrete implementation. Therefore, nothing prevents us from opening this dialogue.” – The Whole Show, 2013
The Wole Show (Clément Caignart)’s work is on display during the exhibition Enfin la résidence !, 2014.
