Mobile / Immobile - exhibition

An exhibition by the Mobile Lives Forum at the Maison de la Photographie (Lille, France)

From June 15 to September 15, 2019

1. Presentation of the exhibition

Since the beginning of the 19th century, the rise of speed and the democratization of motorized travel (steam trains, cars, planes...) has led to a "mobilities turn": it is now common practice to move and travel often, fast and far. These new mobility practices have transformed our societies, our territories and our lifestyles.

The exhibition, firstly at the National Archives then at the Maison de la Photographie, organized by the Mobile Lives Forum, a think-tank on mobility futures, offers a reflection on how this mobility is central to our contemporary lifestyles and what it may become. By bringing together the views of contemporary artists and social science researchers, along with the collections from the National Archives, the Mobile/Immobile exhibition sheds light on a certain ambivalence with regards to travel. Indeed, travel can be a great source of freedom (the thrill of speed, the possibility to move away from one’s geographical environment or to work in the city while living in the countryside...) but also of alienation (intensification of daily life, pressures of professional mobility...), of controls and restrictions (migrant crisis, varying degrees of access to transport...) and environmental issues (pollution, climate change...). The mobility of refugees documented by Ai Weiwei, the mysteriously fluid crowds of Tokyo shown by Sylvie Bonnot, Le Corbusier’s Plan Voisin for Paris reimagined by Alain Bublex, the dispersion of our social lives depicted by Laurent Proux, the polluted urban landscapes of Tim Franco, the life of neonomads studied by Ferjeux van der Stigghel, the slowed down time of Marie Velardi... These singular artistic visions of our mobile lives and of utopian and dystopian futures invite us to think about different ways of life, alternative models and possibilities that are almost real.

The exhibition was designed by the Mobile Lives Forum with Hélène Jagot (Director of the Museum of la Roche-sur-Yon) and François Michaud (curator of the City of Paris Museum of Modern Art). The exhibition combines many different artworks (photographs, objects, paintings, drawings, videos, installations), many of which were commissioned by the Mobile Lives Forum, forming a dialogue with the National Archives collections on the monitoring of human movements and scientific publications. After seven years of research in arts and science overseen by the Mobile Lives Forum, the Mobile/Immobile exhibition explores in a historical, scientific and sensitive way the present, past and future of our mobility.

Mobility is at the crossroads of the major social, political and environmental issues of our time. These issues required at the very least an exhibition to make them relatable, to shed light on them, to make sense of the important collective choices we now face and to open new paths onto more desirable futures.

2. Artists

3. Commissioners of the exhibition

• Hélène JAGOT (Director of the Museum of La Roche-sur-Yon)
• François MICHAUD (Chief Curator at the City of Paris Museum of Modern Art)
• Pierre FOURNIÉ (Head of cultural and educational outreach at the National Archives)
• Christophe GAY (Co-Director of the Mobile Lives Forum)
• Sylvie LANDRIÈVE (Co-directeur du Forum Vies Mobiles)
• Vincent KAUFMANN (Scientific Director of the Mobile Lives Forum, and Director of the laboratory of urban sociology of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (LaSUR-EPFL))
  
  

4. Exhibition catalogue

Co-published by: Lienart – Mobile Lives Forum
Collective work
Public price: €23 / Format: 16.5 X 23.5 cm
192 pages / 120 color reproductions / Print: four color process.
Binding: paperback
Published in French and English
ISBN : 978-2-35906-260-1
Available in bookstores from January 17, 2019

Designed as a book in its own right, the catalogue will showcase the works of the exhibition through 120 reproductions. Organized according to the four main parts of the exhibition, it will present all the accompanying texts as well as the scientific insights presented in video form.

Designed as a book in its own right, the catalogue will showcase the works of the exhibition through 120 reproductions. Organized according to the four main parts of the exhibition, it will present all the accompanying texts as well as the scientific insights presented in video form.

6. Practical information

Maison de la Photographie 28 rue Pierre Legrand 59000 Lille

7. Press Kit (available in French only)

Mobility

For the Mobile Lives Forum, mobility is understood as the process of how individuals travel across distances in order to deploy through time and space the activities that make up their lifestyles. These travel practices are embedded in socio-technical systems, produced by transport and communication industries and techniques, and by normative discourses on these practices, with considerable social, environmental and spatial impacts.

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