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Continuing its series of field trips to major international contemporary art events, Kultur | lx organised a fieldtrip to Lyon from 12 to 14 September, on the occasion of the professional days of the 16th Biennale of Contemporary Art. It was also an opportunity to highlight the release of Yann Annicchiarico’s book, which received the Kultur | lx portfolio grant last spring.

Postponed, due to the pandemic, the Lyon Biennial of Art (14/09-31/12/2022) joins the movements of post-covid questioning of the world that have agitated major contemporary art events this year. The title of the exhibition, “Manifesto of Fragility”, curated by Till Fellrath and Sam Bardaouil, both co-directors of the Berlin Museum of Contemporary Art – Hamburger Bahnhof, “affirms fragility as intrinsically linked to a form of resistance initiated in the past, in touch with the present and capable of facing the future”. Taking 12 sites in the city of Lyon, from the former Fagor factories to the macLyon, via the Gadagne Museum and the Lyon Part Dieu train station, the Biennial invites us to accept “fragility as one of the most widespread truths in our divided world” and to think about this vulnerability in the light of the works and objects presented, created over the course of two millennia.

As the most important event dedicated to contemporary art in France outside of Paris, the Lyon Biennial was once again colourful on its opening days, with a large number of people coming to meet the artists, most of whom were present in the exhibition spaces. Seven Luxembourg artists (Bruno Baltzer, Sofia Bouratsis, Jessica Dasilva, Robert Frankle, Claudia Passeri, Letizia Romanini and Julie Wagener) responded to the call for applications launched by Kultur | lx. They participated in a program consisting of visits to exhibitions, meetings with their peers, and social events (openings, professional brunch).

The launch of Yann Annicchiarico’s book, De papillons de nuit et de l’échelle de Muybridge (Moths and the Muybridge Scale), just published by Presses du réel (Dijon, 2022), was the highlight of this programme.  It was presented in dialogue with the curator Sofia Bouratsis during a stroll along the banks of the Saône that allowed the public to reach the ENSBA (École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Lyon), and the book was awarded the portfolio grant by Kultur | lx last May. De papillons de nuit et de l’échelle de Muybridge by Yann Annicchiarico is the second publication in the collection of the ENSBA’s Contemporary Art and Time of History research unit, edited by Bernhard Rüdiger. The book looks back at a singular state of perception. Not an active and conscious perception, but a particular state of the senses when they are exposed to the experience of emptiness – a suspension of attention that is an essential element of Yann Annicchiarico’s research.

This launch closes the season of major contemporary art events to which Kultur | lx has invited the Luxembourg art scene. Through these movements and exchanges between events, the formation of these small groups of people with varying backgrounds has enabled the artists to get to know each other better and to exchange ideas in contexts that are likely to lead to in-depth discussions. In December, Kultur | lx will publish a calendar of events for 2023 that will be considered for mobility grants.