Talk

Laundry talk : Benoît Piéron and Sandrine Gasparine Alexandre

Monday 22 Apr 2024 from 7pm to 8:30pm

Free upon registration

Talk in french

© Léna Domergue

An encounter between artist Benoît Piéron and philosopher Sandrine Gasparine Alexandre about the theme of the waiting.

This discussion looks at the idea of deprogramming, and the possibility of transforming our relationship with time and the places of waiting.

The artist Benoît Piéron, whose work 'Laundrette' is on show in the 'Coming Soon' exhibition, discusses these issues with the philosopher Sandrine Gasparine Alexandre, author of 'L'attente ou l'art de perdre patience'.
Benoît Piéron works on creating moments, installations, and objects exploring the sensuality of plants, the limits of the human body, and the temporal nature of waiting rooms. His creative journey covers various practices, including patchwork, existential gardening, and wallpaper creation.

Affected by a long-term illness, Benoît Piéron maintains a very close relationship with the hospital ecosystem. He has developed a practice inspired by this environment and seeks to lend a plasticity to illness. Far from the romantic heroism of typical metaphors for disease, Piéron positions himself in a joyful gray area. Through his art, he strives to explore these uncharted territories, viewing them not as a burden but as a potential source of creative expression.

Selected exhibitions: Coming Soon, Lafayette Anticipations, Paris (2024); Slumber Party, Chisenhale Gallery, London (2023); Der pinkelnde Tod, Kunstverein Bielefeld, Bielefeld (2023); Avant l’Orage, Bourse du Commerce, Pinault Collection, Paris (2023); uMoya: The Sacred Return of Lost Things, Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool (2023); Exposé.es, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2023); Horizones, Fondation Pernod Ricard, Paris (2022); Bandage, galerie du Haïdouc à l’Antre Peaux, Bourges (2022); Illness Shower, Sultana Summer Set, Galerie Sultana, Arles (2022); Deux drapeaux, Une Belladone, L’alcôve, Paris (2021); VIH/sida, l’épidémie n’est pas finie, Mucem, Marseille (2021); Plaid, Cité internationale des Arts, Paris (2021); Mort is more, Brasserie Atlas, Brussels (2021).

Sandrine Gasparine Alexandre is graduated from the École normale supérieure de Lyon and holds an agrégation and a doctorate in philosophy. She is currently a research associate at IRePh in Nanterre where she teaches philosophy to a number of different audiences.

As a specialist in ancient philosophy, its reception and contemporary uses, her publications include 24h de la vie de Socrate en 2023.

In her latest book, L'attente ou l'art de perdre patience (Waiting or the Art of Losing Patience), she takes the opposite approach from moralising or psychologising views that would reduce waiting to a singular, private experience of tim and proposes a critical and political approach that makes waiting a complex experience at the heart of neoliberal rationality. She shows how this initially trivial and tedious experience, associated with painful patience, turns out to be a central element of neoliberal governmentality and, among other things, how a queer perspective could shed new light on government by waiting and the resistance that can be brought to it.