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Invitation – Guided Walk

A guided walk in Lyon—from place Sathonay to 8 Bis Quai Saint-Vincent—will mark the launch of a new book by artist Yann Annicchiarico, De papillons de nuit et de l’échelle de Muybridge. The Contemporary Art and Temporalities of History (ACTH) research department at the Lyon Ecole des Beaux-Arts (ENSBA) and Kultur | lx invite you to join the conversation between curator Sofia Eliza Bouratsis and the artist along the way.

This walk through the city is Yann Annicchiarico’s last stop after his recent travels between Kosovo and Greece. It is an exploration that began in Luxembourg, the artist’s birthplace but by no means his only base. Part Luxembourger, part Greek, part Italian, the artist’s archipelago of identities has influenced the work presented in this new book. This perpetual sense of externality allowed him to question our sense of perception and our sensory organs, to examine their potential suspension. It shall also serve as a way to approach his work in De papillons de nuit et l’échelle de Muybridge during the walk. This brief encounter will be an opportunity to explore all that is not contained within the book, yet determined the content.

De papillons de nuit et de l’échelle de Muybridge by Yann Annicchiarico is the third title in the collection published by the ACTH research department. It received a Kultur | lx Portfolio Grant in 2022 and is part of the ACTH’s project to publish essays by contemporary artists. These reflections include visual and audio content, movement, dialogue, and dialectical explanations.

De Papillons de nuit et de l’échelle de Muybridge brings together reflections and accounts from exhibitions in Germany, Luxembourg, France and Italy. The book reflects on a unique state of perception. It is not active conscious perception, but rather the state of the senses when they are exposed to a void—the suspension of attention, a key element in Yann Annicchiarico’s research.

Walk through Lyon
Tuesday 13 September at 4 p.m.
Meeting point at the old Café de la mairie, 4 place Sathonay Lyon, 45,76893° N, 4,83010° E.
Walk & Conversation between Sofia Elisa Bouratsis and Yann Annicchiarico at Les planches by Tadashi Kawamata on the banks of the Saône, 45,76810° N, 4,82238° E.

Discover
Book launch at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, under the arches of the Réfectoire Gallery.
8bis Quai Saint Vincent: 45,76792° N, 4,81731° E.

Publication
De papillons de nuit et de l’échelle de Muybridge by Yann Annicchiarico.
Published by the Contemporary Art and Temporalities of History Research Department (ACTH) at the Lyon Ecole des Beaux-Arts (ENSBA), with support from Kultur | lx – Arts Council Luxembourg.
Collection Artists’ Reflections.
With contributions from Jennifer Lauro Mariani, Clément Minighetti and Bernhard Rüdiger.
Publication date: September 2022.
Available at Presses du réel.
Bilingual edition: French and English.
Graphic design by Rémi Forte.
Graphic work by Juliette Flécheux.
Lettering by Immortel Infra G2 & Immortel Acedia, drawn by Clément Le Tulle-Neyret (2021), and distributed by 205TF.

Yann Annicchiarico (1983, Luxembourg) is irrecoverably foreign to his world. Neither entirely luxemburgish, greek or italian, this state of being at a permanent exterior has given him the means to question human perception and the organs it responds to, so as to study its possible suspension. His work confronts our human nature with worlds that are inaccessible to it and explores their potential spaces. Inseparable from the still or moving body, the act of perceiving in Annicchiarico’s work prompts an awareness of the limits of our own understanding and the possibility of transcending these limits. A shift from intelligibility to sensibility occurs when we grasp the impenetrability of dimensions that are foreign to us despite the fact that we rub shoulders with them. This impenetrability is ushered in by the reoccuring irruption of moths in his artworks, which leave marks of their passage and activate the gap between two worlds.

Yann Annicchiarico has held solo exhibitions at Réfectoire des nonnes in Lyon (2021); KIT – Kunst im Tunnel in Düsseldorf (2020); Nosbaum Reding Projects, Luxembourg (2019); Centre des Arts Pluriels, Ettelbruck (2018) and has participated in group exhibitions in MUDAM – musée d’art moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg (2021); Museo Archeologico del Chianti Senese, Castellina in Chianti, Italy (2019) and at Villa Médicis, Académie de France, Rome (2015). He is a fellow artist-researcher with ACTH (Contemporary Art and Historical Time) since 2011.

Sofia Eliza Bouratsis is Greek and Luxemburgish. She lives between both countries and has worked in theoretical research, contemporary art, and cultural policy for more than a decade. She wrote her PhD on the Aesthetics and poetics of the body. The challenges of Bioart. in Arts and Art Sciences (Aesthetics) at the University of Paris 1 – Pantheon-Sorbonne in 2015 under the supervision of Professor Marc Jimenez. In addition to questions about aesthetics and corporality as expressed in contemporary art, her research includes the incorporation of the lived experience and the institutionalisation of the body. She is also interested in debates around public spaces, the transformation and gentrification of urban areas, the periphery (rural areas), remembrance, and fundamentally collective artistic practices. She occasionally teaches university courses (University of Québec, Montréal, 2016-2017) and prison courses (Second Chance School in Diavata Prison, Thessaloniki, 2016-2020). She has contributed to a variety of projects as a curator for public institutions, museums, galleries, architects’ offices, and local councils, amongst others. From 2014 to 2018, she worked closely with Danielle Igniti, then manager of the Dudelange City Art Centres. From 2008 to 2021, she was the social sciences editor of the transdisciplinary research review, Prétentaine, founded and run by Jean-Marie Brohm. Since 2015, she has organised exhibitions in several different countries and institutions. Bouratsis has a special interest in locations that do not usually host contemporary art (for example, prisons or remote villages).