Balloon flower - Jeff Koons

The Jeff Koons exhibition in the Chateau de Versailles illustrates how important the process of curation is in the reception of art. Curation is a relatively recent discipline, at least in our shared consciousness. It can be defined as the process of selecting and organizing artwork in order to further knowledge.  A curator is thus an agent taking part in the cultural assimilation of art. He is a kind of “culturepreneur” who organizes  art collections, exhibitions or festivals; explaining his approach through articles, books and conventions. His work influences what will be culturally remembered, how it will be perceived and classified.

The Jeff Koons exhibition shows a special kind of curation, the artist was heavily involved in the selection of his own work. It is difficult to know exactly who did what in this curatorial process because of the idolatry surrounding the Jeff Koons superstar. The exhibition is an enormous marketing machine designed to attract international visitors to Versailles. By watching the opening press conference (in French), someone might think that Jeff Koons genially did everything by himself. But if I look at the official website, the names of Elena Geuna and Laurent Le Bon appear as curators. Anyhow, you can feel a very artistic approach to the curation. It is powerful, experimental and generator of meaning. There is a real dialogue between the exhibited artwork and its historical environment.

Hoover installation in front of Marie Antoinette’s painting

I would like to take the example of the Hoover installation in front of Marie Antoinette’s painting. I’m not sure about the artist’s view that hoovers represent uteruses. But I was stroke by the symbolic confrontation. Marie Antoinette and hoovers are two symbols of the history of women. One is grandiose and powerful, the other one is functional and enslaving. But then comes questions, are they really that different? Was not Marie Antoinette also imprisoned in a wife’s role? Are they not two symbols of a certain cocooning? And obviously, there is this contrast between the rich Versailles and the mass market hoovers. Both symbols here are equally represented, face to face.

Michael Jackson's statue

The previous example is confrontational but I was also impressed by how some artworks integrated their environment.  I had to look twice to notice the Jeff Koons flower vase. It seemed to have been made for the baroque Queen’s room. The work of Jeff Koons gave also back some lightness to the historical site. Now that Versailles is an institution, it is easy to forget it was initially a place devoted to the craziest caprices of its occupants. Michael Jackson’s statue revives this reality of Versailles and has thus its place in the Venus salon.

So yes, the Jeff Koons exhibition is a megalomaniac marketing campaign around the artist’s personality. But that doesn’t stop the venture to be meaningful. It was very risky for the curators to make such a bold statement. Choosing this American artist for the first contemporary art retrospective in Versailles is an uncompromised move to new lectures of its history, enriching a thriving international culture .

For those who want to learn more about curating, I recommend the book “Issues in curating contemporary art and performance” edited by Judith Rugg and Michèle Sedgwick. I was expecting some kind of pretentious artist blah-blah but the articles from Paul O’Neill or JJ Charlesworth for example where actually very sensible and useful.

Christophe Bruchansky

Futuroscope

Though I’m a big fan of themed ride experiences and am working in media innovation,  I never visited the Futuroscope park of Poitiers. It’s a little more than an hour away from Paris by TGV, so I decided to address this gap during my previous trip to the French capital. What makes the park unique is in my opinion the mix between new technologies and the French cultural exception. Let me explain why.

Futuroscope is the second biggest theme park in France, after Disneyland Paris resort. It is radically different from other theme parks as it focuses mainly on simulators and audio-visual experiences. The look of the park is also unique with its futuristic buildings from Denis Laming.

Futurist

augmented reality

The park doesn’t have the budget of Universal Studios or DisneyWorld and I was surely not expecting to see the best rides on earth. The Futuroscope is more a place of innovative experiments, on a small budget. There, you can test rides which will probably become available on a bigger scale in major theme parks. For example, the Dances with Robots manufactured by Kuka gives a first idea of the sensations one might expect from the Wizarding world of Harry Potter ride due in 2010. Another example is the Future is Wild developed by Future immersion, which will surely inspire new rides with its smart use of real settings, augmented reality and interactivity.

But beyond those technical  innovations, the Futuroscope also incarnates the French cultural exception. The movies such as Dynamic Vienne, the Wings of Courage or Destination Cosmos are combining high technology for mass consumption with a real French personal touch. The narrations are more elaborated and less gimmicky than what you could see in a typical theme park. They genuinely put more emphasis on the education and sensitivity, but still manage to be enough entertaining for everyone.

Dynamic Vienne by Olivier Chavarot is a simulator not using the usual digital images but instead old fashion acrobatic stunts. The movie is a little old, 1993, but is still one of the best simulator movie I have ever seen. Car racing is a great way to get thrilled and this movie masters the genre.

The wings of Courage by Jean-Jacques Annaud is a 3D movie with, exceptional fact, a real story. It attempts to go further than giving you a blast. The 3D makes everything look more real and the story feels much closer to you.

Destination cosmos in the planetarium does also go beyond showing the public a series of spectacular blowing pictures. It takes the time to drive the audience to a much more thrilling sense, the infinity of the universe.  It is in fact a US movie and is called Passport to the universe (music from Stephen Endelman). It is usually played in museums and I found some bad reviews on the Internet saying it is too slow. Culture is not only about production but also about perspective and selection. It is in that sense that playing a show like this in the Futuroscope adds to its French particularity.

Sculptures

On the down side, the futuristic lay out of the park makes it a little cold and monotonous. The sculptures from Toutain help to make it a little bit warmer on that respect. I was there at the autumn season and they could have also better adapted the park to a low attendance (by for example focusing on one lively area instead of letting the public spread all over the place at night, with most of the shops / restaurants closed).

Christophe Bruchansky

Napoleon Bonaparte

France is the most popular tourist destination of the world, thanks to its massive cultural patrimony, more than 3,000 heritage sites open to the public. Its position is however challenged in a constantly evolving tourism industry. This is why ODIT France has been created, its mission is to analyze the tourism market and help French institutions and corporations to better fulfill its demands. Here is a summary of the presentation ‘How to make culture and leisure work together?’ that ODIT France presented at the International Heritage show held in the Carrousel du Louvre, Paris. I found the subject fascinating because it mixes the most commercial marketing methodologies with very important cultural considerations.

Corinne Lespinasse-Taraba presented a very interesting example of how to elaborate a cultural offer, a ‘Napoleon‘ offer in this case. Tourists from emerging countries such as China, Brazil and Russia are an important new market. How to attract them with new French offers? Marketing studies revealed that they are aware of the name ‘Napoleon’ that they associated with France. This cultural ‘brand‘ has been somehow neglected but has the potential to introduce them to the French cultural offer. ‘Napoleon’ is a brand that can be used as a ‘mise en scene’, a stage of the French culture. French heritage sites having a link with Napoleon have then be indexed and classified by distance, cost, and facilities. ‘Napoleon’ tours have been designed in function of the expectation, time and budget of the Chinese, Brazilian and Russian tourists.

This business case leads to a lot of questions. Those tourists will hear more of Napoleon not because of his importance in the French history, but because of their attitude to that ‘brand’ beforehand. This could lead easily to a distorted cultural representation of France; if applied without carefulness. But maybe history has always been a distortion. The only difference in this case is that it is lead by commercial / marketing considerations, playing the same role than religious, aristocratic or bourgeoisie considerations that wrote history in the past. Is this marketing approach different?

Another interesting aspect is the parallel between Napoleon and a brand. A corporation is marketed with a story board (its success story), brands and key advertising messages. History is in a way the marketing communication of the humanity organization. But what does it sells and to whom?

Example: the National gallery shop in London

Christophe de Chassey then explained how to choose the right strategy for a shop implantation on a heritage site. Opposite to the popular belief, a shop’s aim is not always to provide new streams of revenues. A shop extends the cultural experience by providing to visitors objects related to their visits. It can this way reinforce the brand of the cultural site, providing that the range of products is chosen carefully to be relevant to the site’s theme. Souvenirs are in fact free ads that promote effectively the site. Only for sites having more than 150,000 the shop can become a source of revenues (with a rough average of 2 Euros spent per visitor on a historic site).

The example of heritage site shops shows very clearly that shopping is a media in itself. Products have a cultural, informative value which can be exchanged. It blurs the artificial separation between commerce and culture. What is the cultural message conveyed by the products of high street shops? How could we compare a heritage site with a shopping mall site?

Those subjects are perfect examples for anyone interested in studying the relation between culture, art, knowledge and practical viability, profitability. Answering those questions goes much further than the promotion of French tourism.