The curatorial collective Curate It Yourself, in collaboration with the students of the OPUS Collection seminar of the École nationale supérieure d’arts de Paris Cergy, proposes Collective Work, a program of artistic interventions at the Centre d’art contemporain d’Ivry - le Crédac, in partnership with the Centre national des arts plastiques.
The Collective Work program was conceived within the OPUS Collection research and creation workshop of the École nationale supérieure d’arts de Paris-Cergy. OPUS Collection favors the spirit of transversality, pluridisciplinarity and experimentation, by developing research around different French collections, both public and private. In an open dialogue with cultural and artistic actors of the contemporary scene, this seminar aims to create a physical and intellectual confrontation between young visual artists and the works of major artists. This year has been dedicated to the analysis of the contemporary art collection of the Centre national des arts plastiques, with a particular focus on collective practices, in order to question the implications, the methods and the different approaches of “collaborative” creation.

Hosted at Crédac, the Collective Work program is conceived as a space for work and knowledge sharing that allows for a dynamic and performative learning system. The curatorial intention is to map the collective work within Crédac by inserting it into spaces that are usually hidden, partly inaccessible to the public, some of them reserved for the team’s activities. Production cells managed directly by the artists thus infiltrate the life of the art center and take over its architecture. Collective Work wishes, by this, to enlarge the frames of an unfinished scenario which distances itself from the traditional canons of monstration to open itself to the interaction and the unexpected. The intermittent and furtive nature of this program crystallizes a processual approach where the artistic proposals reveal to the public a hybridization of forms, techniques and materials.

The selected artists have chosen to come together as a collective to share the moment of creation and establish a working environment based on constant confrontation, open exchange and horizontal decision-making. Collective Work thus blurs the boundaries between the works exhibited, the context of reactivation, the visitors and the daily functioning of a cultural institution.

Finally, a series of projections of graphic video works from the collection of the Centre national des arts plastiques, created by collectives and artist duos, feed the program of Crédakino, the screening room of Crédac.