Cool Down Contemporary art group show
“Cool Down” project invites the viewer to think about our individual roles in tackling the climate change, and about our relationship to others. It also questions our impact on the implementation of common solutions. This theme is at the heart of a growing trend among climate experts.
As argued by Philippe Biouix in his best-selling book L’âge des low-tech, the society needs to slow down and come back to sustainable, more energy-efficient, less raw-material intensive technical solutions. This implies that people should shift away from the quest for spectacular economic growth and aim at reaching a sustainable future. The “Cool Down” project has been developed in partnership with the B.A.R. (Bureau d’Art et de Recherche) and “Subliminaloops” artists collective. It could be defined as a “slow art” project in which artists free themselves from the high tech that has become an integral part of contemporary art.
The works exhibited focus on saving resources and materials and on the techniques of recycling objects and images, withdrawing from immediacy and taking a sober approach. Beyond this apparent creative simplicity the exhibition has to be considered as a massive machine in which every piece of art corresponds to an individual cog. Each of these cogs conditions the proper functioning of the whole. This exhibition individually and collectively invites each of us to take their part, as in the Colibri fable used by Pierre Rahbi.