We Want Something From You (2010)
WE WANT SOMETHING FROM YOU is a practical experiment and a group exhibition initiated by Richard Ibghy & Marilou Lemmens.
Invited artists: Jesse Birch, Pia Fuchs (German ID of Patricia Reed), Caroline Gagné, Marina Roy, and Juliane Zelwies.
WE WANT SOMETHING FROM YOU began with an invitation from Galerie Sans Nom for us to curate a program of works for their audio-video space. We then passed the invitation on to five artists.
From the start, we decided to define WWSFY as a practical experiment leading to a group exhibition. We did not provide the participating artists with a thematic guideline or intend for the exhibition to map an artistic trend. Nor did we suggest a thoughtful etymological curiosity that might work to link disparate practices. What we did propose was a working structure within which the artists were asked to take shared responsibility for defining a collective program.
One of the initial challenges became envisioning a framework that would allow for a form of engagement to take place between artists who didn’t know each other and who worked in different locations.
Eventually, exchanges focused on the framework of the project itself, particularly issues related to its social, symbolic and technological challenges. These discussions brought to the fore the one condition shared by each one of the artists: they had been invited to participate in a project which, far from providing them with the empty framework we had intended from the start, constituted a highly determined, difficult, and at times, uncomfortable situation in which to work. Without trying to come to a consensus - which was never the point - each artist decided to explore some aspect of the framework itself as a point of departure for their individual contribution.
