RÉSIDENCE 2018

In 2018, Toulouse was chosen as “Cité européenne de la Science ». It is the first time that a french city is chosen to welcome the ESOF (EuroScience Open Forum), the most important multidisciplinary meeting on science and innovation in Europe. Toulouse, big university city, has an electric research portfolio covering all disciplines and offers an internationally renowned scientific and innovation environment with a top-notch scientific output. 

We believe that science and art are destined to meet in an intimate and creative dialogue that gives us something to see, think and engage with. For Pythagoras, science and mathematisation are not an end in themselves, but a way of revealing a mystery and an emotion. It is this same emotion that photography arouses, which has become a major art form that, more than ever, questions the world around us, brings men and women together, and links our societies. From this double dialectic was born the desire to create the conditions for an annual and original production “made in Toulouse” but open to the world, associating photography and science, artistic creation and knowledge sharing. The 1+2 Residency, which has been awarded the ESOD 2018 label, is a photographic programme with a European vocation based in Toulouse. Each year, the residency brings together three photographers (1 renowned photographer + 2 young photographers), three cities (Toulouse, Brussels, Barcelona) and three media (an exhibition, a set of three books, a documentary). During the two-month residency, the three artist-photographers will share their respective knowledge and produce an original artistic creation. The 1+2 Residency produces, develops and enhances the author’s photography in close connection with an exceptional scientific heritage present in Toulouse and in Occitania. Bringing together “Photography & Science” means participating in this necessary dialogue between several actors of the same society, eager to question together the place of Man in his environment and his role within contemporary societies that are connected, in constant mutation and interdependent. 

This year, the search for a missing origin links the work of our three residents: SMITH, an internationally renowned artist, Camille Carbonaro and Prune Phi. In the form of a photographic investigation, they explore the untraceable part of their identity, located in the cosmos, Italian migrations or the Vietnamese diaspora. Supported in their research by scientific institutions based in Toulouse and its metropolis as well as in Occitania, the artists work with astrophysicists, neuroscientists and historians. These researchers accompany them in the prologue to this long-term investigation, for which the 1+2 Residence allows them to lay the first foundations in the form of images, fanzines, collages, slide shows or videos. For this edition, the American artist Noé Cuellar (Nestor) is directing a documentary-fiction on the converging trajectories of their respective research. Each in his own way has raised the question of truth in science.

A debate with multiple issues that we wish to share with all audiences through several events in October and November: a museum exhibition at the Galerie barrès-Rivet (from 13 October to 30 November), a national colloquium at the Musée d’art moderne et contemporain Les Abattoirs (Saturday 13 October from 9am to 6pm) as well as a series of encounters and interactive mediations. In its collective and participative dynamic, the 1+2 Residence is working to make the Toulouse metropolis a European capital of photography and science.

We wish to share this ambition with you. 

Philippe Guionie 

Director of the Residence 1+2