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Latitudes/RK; Frédéric Deval & Lysiane Gauthier © CAPC Musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux
Curators

4.543 billion. The Matter of Matter

CAPC musée d’art contemporain Bordeaux, Bordeaux, France, 29 June 2017–7 January 2018

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An exhibition with works by: A.J. Aalders, Lara Almarcegui, Maria Thereza Alves, Félix Arnaudin, Amy Balkin, Alessandro Balteo-Yazbeck in collaboration with Media Farzin, Bernd Becher and Hilla Becher, Étienne Denisse, Hubert Duprat, Giulio Ferrario, Ângela Ferreira, Anne Garde, Ambroise-Louis Garneray, Terence Gower, Rodney Graham, Ilana Halperin (also at the Université de Bordeaux’s zoology department), Marianne Heier, Christina Hemauer and Roman Keller, Lucas Ihlein and Louise Kate Anderson, Jannis Kounellis, Martín Llavaneras, Erlea Maneros Zabala, Nicholas Mangan, Fiona Marron, Alexandra Navratil, Xavier Ribas, Alfred Roll, Amie Siegel, Lucy Skaer, Alfred Smith, Rayyane Tabet, Pierre Théron, Pep Vidal, Alexander Whalley Light, Stuart Whipps (also at the Musée des Beaux-Arts) as well as documents and ‘meaningful objects’ lent by the archives of the CAPC, the Archives Bordeaux Métropole, the Archives départementales de la Gironde, and the geology collection of the UFR Sciences de la Terre et de la Mer, Université de Bordeaux.


“4.543 Billion. The Matter of Matter” was a group exhibition that brought together over thirty artists from different eras and nationalities, featuring more than one hundred works spanning two centuries. It examined the intersection of artistic production, cultural histories, and institutional collections with ecological processes and geological timescales.

The exhibition unfolded as a continuum of materials and temporal landscapes—encompassing films, works on paper, photographs, sculptures, documents, and other meaningful things – and sprang from the CAPC building’s former life building itself: once a warehouse for colonial commodities, its limestone walls were once deep in the ground, and its wooden beams were once part of a living forest.

A central proposition of the exhibition was that works of art participate in geophysical history as much as they do in art history. “4.543 Billion. The Matter of Matter” sought to reconcile micro-local perspectives with planetary scales, proposing that certain histories of art might be reinterpreted as fragments within broader narratives about the Earth—its material composition, temporalities, and the ways human presence has been rendered within them. What is at stake, the exhibition asked, when art and museums cultivate a greater temporal and material consciousness? How might such institutions transcend the prevailing spatial framework of “think globally, act locally” in favour of a more durational imperative: “think historically, act geologically”?

Rejecting a homogenised account in which modernity alone is positioned as the agent of ecological crisis—or in which “humanity” is invoked as an undifferentiated subject of responsibility—the exhibition advanced a situated perspective on the past. Many of the artists engaged with the enduring ramifications of past and present colonial forces, foregrounding the specific actions and legacies of individuals, corporations, states, and political systems. Their works illuminated how mineral and organic processes have been co-constitutive of culture, underscoring the ways in which extractive regimes have materially shaped aesthetic practices, institutional infrastructures, and the global circulation of art.

Several of the more research-driven and documentary practices traced the entangled relationships between modern art, museums, and wealth derived from extractive economies. These approaches often combined methodologies drawn from Earth sciences, political history, and critical sociology to investigate the epistemologies and injustices embedded within the cultural sector. Other contributions adopted more sensorial or speculative registers—employing filmic, sculptural, graphic, or atmospheric strategies to examine themes such as energy, material transformation, and metabolic exchange. Whether through reflections on sunlight, forests ecologies, petrochemical derivatives, or the infrastructural demands of exhibition-making itself, the works collectively expanded the temporal and ontological scope through which art's entanglement with planetary matter might be understood.
 CAPC musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux
7, rue Ferrère
33000 Bordeaux
France
www.capc-bordeaux.fr

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 1 July 2017, 11am: Curators' guided tour to the friends of CAPC.

 19 October 2017, 2pm.
 16 November 2017, 2pm.
 14 December 2017, 2pm.
 4 January 2018, 2pm.
Guided visit to Ilana Halperin’s ‘The Rock Cycle’ (2017) intervention at the Salle des Collections de l'Unité de Formation de Biologie, Université de Bordeaux.

 8 November 2017, 5:30–7pm:
Jam Session #1—Guided tour by Terence Gower (participating artist) and Bruno Cahuzac (Professor, UFR Sciences de la Terre et de la Mer, Université de Bordeaux Montaigne)

 15 November 2017, 4:30–8pm:
‘The Return of the Earth: Ecologising art history in the Anthropocene’
Lecture by Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, conversation between Xavier Ribas and Ângela Ferreira, convened by Latitudes. Free access. Simultaneous translation.

 6 December 2017, 5:30–7pm:
Jam Session #2—Guided tour by Isabelle Kanor (Head of Le Labo de lettres, association dealing with cultural issues on the Caribbean and colonization), and Charlotte Bouvier and Remi Cazamajor (Inélia).

booklet-CAPC-DSCF0027

‘4.543 billion’ free exhibition booklet
Edited by: Latitudes and Myrtille Bouregeois;
Publisher: CAPC musée;
Texts by: Latitudes;
Graphic Concept: Zak Group;
Format: 148 x 210 mm, 40/44 pp and PDF download
Language: English & French editions;
Print-run: 500;
Date of Publication: June 2017
 English PDF (8.4 MB)
 French PDF (9.2 MB)

Organised and produced by CAPC musée as part of the cultural season Paysages Bordeaux 2017. Within the exhibition framework, Latitudes led the month-long residency programme ‘Geologic Time’ at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Alberta, Canada.

Exhibition coordination:
Alice Cavender (CAPC)

Generously supported by:
Pro Helvetia
INÉLIA
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