23. 09. 2017 – 07. 01. 2018
Curator: Fabien Pinaroli
Artists: Nora Al-Badri & Jan Nikolai Nelles, Michel Aubry, Rossella Biscotti, Alighiero Boetti, Milena Bonilla & Carlos Marx, Stewart Brand, Andrea Büttner, Renaud Clément & Bassel Khartabil, Gaëtan Gatian de Clérambault, Catherine Creuze, Délit Maille, HEAR Mulhouse (design textile), Ben Kinmont, KVM (Ju Hyun Lee et Ludovic Burel), Pierre Leguillon & Jean Dubuffet, David Liver, Nicolas Maigret & Maria Roszkowska, Jane Makhubele, Marie & IL TOPO, Olive Martin & Patrick Bernier, Isabelle Moulin, Julien Prévieux, Lorraine Réda, Edward Saïd & Joe Scanlan, Laura Séguy, Katarina Sevic & Tehnica Schweiz, Seth Siegelaub, Dagmara Stephan, Coline Sunier & Charles Mazé, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Ambroise Tièche, Tran Minh Duc
Artist-publisher or artist-weaver, Native American or African woman, cyberactivist, thinker of post-colonialism, computer hacker, etc. indexmakers includes those who create common ground by empowering minor knowledges and skills in bringing them to the forefront. The traditional dichotomy between «the thinker» and «the maker» is thus questioned in order to overcome a strictly aesthetic or utilitarian apprehension and to consider new forms of information spreading. The relations of power, prestige and identity are also disrupted. Seth Siegelaub and Stewart Brand are the two seminal figures in this exhibition.
Between 1968 and 1972, both publish books of special nature. Seth Siegelaub’s bibliographical research makes some of the less visible knowledge accessible and sets up two research centres. As well as he supports the emerging conceptual art and Marxist criticism of the mass media, he also gathers the scattered elements of a social history of textiles. Stewart Brand is the instigator of the Whole Earth Catalog, that brings together many DIY books and articles to which not only the American counter-culture owes much, but also, paradoxically, the Silicon Valley moghuls. The ideology that has allowed the emergence of such private empires is being challenged by computer hackers and free informationsharing activists in the indexmakers exhibition. According to the philosopher Hartmut Böhme, a civilization only exists, culturally speaking, when it masters the techniques used to connect. The traditional textile arts are part of this, as well as the web and open source initiatives, but also the world of the Makers—third places, fab-labs and other hacker spaces that flourish today. Indexmakers makes unconventional and unexpected connections between, for example, an artist using weaving, bibliographies, a do-it-yourselfer and culinary arts.