Morceaux choisis is the first seminal overview of Saâdane Afif’s artistic practices. The publication features 48 exhibitions or performances organized in 28 separate sections, covering a period of 14 years.

Starting with Melancholic Beat at Museum Folkwang, Essen in 2004 and leading up to the recent exhibition Musiques pour tuyauterie, at mor charpentier, Paris in 2018, the monograph considers the format of the exhibition as Saâdane Afif’s medium, through which his work takes form and can be read.

Each one of the figuring exhibitions form an individual booklet: the pages with full color reproductions of the individual works and installation views are inserted within four additional pages providing the exhibition’s title, description, details and captions.

These 28 booklets form the body of the publication. The exhibition texts have been written by Lily Matras and Yasmine d’O. They are accompanied by an interview of Saâdane Afif by Lili Reynaud-Dewar, two critical texts by Zoë Gray and Jörn Schafaff, an index of the exhibited works and an index of Afif ’s released books and records.

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This book is published on the occasion of the eponymous exhibition produced by the Wiels and curated by Dirk Snauwaert and Charlotte Friling. It held at the Manège de Sury, Mons (European Capital of Culture), from June to October 2015.

This project takes as its starting point the history of Mons and the Borinage, comparing it with the history of the modern age on an international scale, and relating it to the present time through the voices of some twenty artists questioning our times and our environment.

What we generally call “modernity,” that history of multiple conquests targeting control over reality through technology and science, also refers to the exploration through art of the hidden dimensions of our behaviour, our ideas and our subjectivity.

Atopolis proposes to rediscover models of social and cultural utopia developed by personalities from our region, but the exhibition also unveils captivating works created by artists who are watchful and critical of the era of globalisation in which we are living, that of uniform channels of information and free trade, leading both to an unprecedented connectivity and to a loss of frames of reference.

Atopolis, a title which echoes the ideas of Edouard Glissant, a writer who has philosophised about identities and migratory movements, seems an excellent metaphor of our digital era, given the importance it grants to the development of models of cohabiting and coexistence which seem to hark back to the social utopias that have emerged from our region.

This publication is composed of two interdepedent parts: one with the texts of four different authors on all the works at show; the second one with visual and textual elements from the Mundaneum Archives, excerpts of texts of Edouard Glissant, Raoul Vaneigem, Paul Lafargue, a.o., and unpublished material of Allan Sekula on the Borinage.

With Saâdane Afif, Nevin Aladağ, Francis Alÿs, Danai Anesiadou, El Anatsui, Yto Barrada, Huma Bhabha, Vincen Beeckman, Vlassis Caniaris, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Meschac Gaba, Jef Geys, Thomas Hirschhorn, David Medalla, Adrian Melis, Benoit Platéus, Walter Swennen, Diego Tonus, Jack Whitten…

Edited Sébastien Biset and Raphaël Pirenne (sic)

Textes by Jan Baetens, Sébastien Biset, Yves Citton, Charlotte Friling, Raphaël Pirenne, Dirk Snauwaert, Yoann Van Parys, Elvan Zabunyan.

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Spike #30.

CONTENTS 30

ARTIST’S FAVOURITES
By Saâdane Afif: Katarina Burin, Natalie Czech, Jofroi Amaral, Nathan Peter, Lina Viste Grønli, Adrien Missika

ESSAY

Changes in the Economy of the kunstbetrieb, Part 3: The Freedom of the Curator
By Daniel Baumann

ARTISTS TALK

Markus Schinwald talks to David Cronenberg
 about cinematic sublimation and blank beginnings

CURATOR’S KEY

Fabrice Stroun, forthcoming director of the Kunsthalle Bern on O-ism by Jim Shaw

GALLERIES
Jennifer Teets on the new programmgalerie Marcelle Alix, Paris

INSTITUTION
David Roberts Art Foundation in London is
a new and innovative exhibition space by a private collector. By Adam Carr

COLLECTIONS

A secret history of art: Steven Leiber’s collection
of art ephemera in San Francisco. By Matthew Post

PORTRAIT TOM BURR

Camp, appropriation and politics meet in the work of
this American artist. An Interview by Gianni Jetzer

PORTRAIT MOYRA DAVEY
Fionn Meade finds an obsession with collecting, systematic listing and nostalgic resistance in the photographs of this Canadian artist

PORTRAIT PETER FRIEDL
This Austrian artist never fails to surprise with unexpected strategies that defy all trends. By Raimar Stange

ART & POLITICS

Adam E. Mendelsohn takes a look at Occupy Wall
Street and asks some players in the art world what 
they make of it

ARTIST’S READINGS

Annika von Hausswolff talks to Mika Hannula about Maurice Blanchot’s The Madness of the Day

ARCHITECTURE

Charles Moore’s Piazza d’Italia in New Orleans reveals the topicality of postmodernism. By Michele D’Aurizio

SEDUCTION
or the things we like

REVIEWS

Reviews of international exhibitions

THE PFAFF BROTHERS

A Child is Born on the Internet

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