Palais #10

1977. Theodore Kaczynski—who doesn’t yet answer to the name Unabomber—lives alone in a small cabin in Montana in anticipation of the “collapse of the technological system.” Paul Laffoley finishes The Renovatio Mundi in the confines of a fifteen square meter atelier, and Dieter Roth works on a long-term project: a photographic inventory of all the streets and houses in Reykjavík (33,000 slides). That same year, the Community Reinvestment Act is passed, an attempt to regulate subprime loans.
A wavering of interpretations, an inversion of values, and a paradox of situations… CHASING NAPOLEON recognizes how a rise and fall can spread to reality itself. On the heels of GAKONA and SPY NUMBERS, the electromagnetic specter and the infra-mince, CHASING NAPOLEON and this issue of PALAIS / bring together eighteen artists whose works also read as instruction manuals on how to withdraw into seclusion and take refuge in the limits of the visible.
An issue around the CHASING NAPOLEON group show with: a satyrical fable written in prison by Theodore J. Kaczynski, an essay by the sociologist and historian of the anarchist movement, Ronald Creagh, on American utopias and the new libertarian intellectuals, an interview with François Specq, a specialist on Henry David Thoreau about the Journal of the American poet and philosopher, a text by American artist Paul Lafolley, portfolios (Ola Pehrson, Dieter Roth & Paul Lafolley), as well as an exhibition guide.