RUN RUN RUN

With the implication of Atelier Expérimental (Clans) / CAN (Centre d’art de Neuchâtel – Switzerland) / Clovis XV (Brussels) / D.A.C (Dolceacqua arte contemporanea – Italy) / Fondation René d’Azur (Nice) / In Extenso (Clermont-Ferrand) / La BF15 (Lyon) / La Station (Nice) / Le Bon Accueil (Rennes) / L’entreprise Culturelle (Paris) / L’espace D’en Bas (Paris) / Le Wonder (Saint-Ouen) / Lieu Commun (Toulouse) / Zebra 3-Buysellf (Bordeaux) / LM (Paris) / Macumba Night Club Éditions (Paris) / Maik Alles Gute(Berlin, Leipzig) / Numéro 13 (Brussels) / Palais Des Paris (Tokyo) / Red District(Marseille) / SNAP (Lyon) / Tank Art Space (Marseille)

RUN RUN RUN, an exhibition about the concept of artist-run space, designed by 22 European structures and 120 artists, transforming the Villa Arson in a vast project of creation and experimentation. Project upon the 20th anniversary of La Station (Nice).

Based in Nice, La Station is an artist-run space, a production and exhibition space run by the artists themselves. In most cases, these places include artist studios and exhibition spaces, as well as art mediation activities for all kinds of audiences. They are strongly rooted in the local territory, but also develop programmes with international ambitions. They have an aesthetic as well as a social agenda.

Today, La Station is 20. It has seen 40 resident artists pass through its doors—currently 12—who do their best to make this place viable on a daily basis, manage its administration, propose artistic projects, welcome different audiences, set up and take down the exhibitions, and so much more. They have all contributed in their own way and capacity to making this association evolve. They all have their own vision and interpretation of their time spent in this organisation. La Station is at present the product of these individual but shared experiences. As most artist-run spaces, it is a flexible structure that is deformable and modular, sometimes anarchic, but always lively, willful, and ready to resist.

For its 20th birthday, La Station has been invited to organise an exhibition at the Villa Arson, where most of its residents studied. A return to its roots, but also a recognition from the institution of its actions over all these years. In response to the symbolic significance of this invitation, it wanted to remain faithful to its founding principles. It has therefore asked some of its current and past residents to invite other artist-run spaces to participate in this adventure. More than a simple invitation, the artists have been asked to work together, to invent original forms of collaboration and modes of production. Some 22 organisations and 120 artists will be involved in this innovative collaborative project.

Most of the works have been produced for the exhibition. At the end of the summer of 2016, the Villa Arson hosted the artists in residencies during which they could all work together to produce their artistic creations. They enjoyed private studio space as well as technical workshops, which will transform this institution into a vast work in progress. Each project has found its place according to proposals of collaboration and exchange. It is essentially a question of creating link between works, of giving a dynamic and flexible sense to the mechanisms of the collective work.

RUN RUN RUN, an evocative title that embodies the spirit of endurance as well as the Velvet Underground (the eponymous song written by Lou Reed in 1967), is constructed as an open and multi-faceted exhibition, thought up and conceived by the artists themselves, complex and experimental, but no matter what, deliberately resolved to reflect the generous and interdisciplinary spirit of artist-run spaces. The plurality and diversity of artistic practices will not in any case prevent the artists from “creating together," sharing the work and production. This is neither a subjective vision of art, nor an alternative position, but truly a pragmatic vision of the world, at least of what it should be.