Assisted Manifesto

Assisted Manifesto
We are all assistants and assisted at the same time. Everyone, whether powerful or powerless.

"Close actions" were first carried out during visits to my father, Philippe Fouché, in the medical institutions where he has been living since 2015 (hospitals, rehab centers, nursing homes, specialized care facilities…) following a stroke that left him hemiplegic. Through gestures, movements, and manipulations of objects found on site, I diverted spaces designed for care into spaces of shared life. I acted in Philippe’s vicinity, rather than with him, during the waiting periods when healthcare professionals were attending to him.

"Close actions" derives from "close presences," the expression used by Fernand Deligny to designate those, non-professionals, who, in the Cévennes, from 1968 to the 1990s, watched over the non-speaking autistic children entrusted to them, inventing alongside them a way of life outside any institutional framework, in experimental camps called "living areas."

Since 2020, actors and actresses have been acting as assistant-assisted. Bodily collisions and distancings, objects-sculptures-props-cameras — the close actions do not narrate; they are the result of what I call empathic aberrations, which arise from failures of identification with the other, whether thing or person. The close actions consist in trying to put oneself in the place of a nurse on strike, an infant in the grass, someone who cannot walk, something that rolls, a fork that spins… Failing to succeed, and speculating plastically on the diversity of modes of existence.

Assisted Manifesto takes the form of viewing zones embedded in an environment of objects — props and sculptures — that are like disturbed relics of the close actions.They are also potential markers, temporarily freed from their mode of apparition in the filmed actions. This search for spatial and temporal distance affirms the instability of the physical and emotional laws governing the movement of things and beings. The actions take shape outside the orthonormal space where everything is supposed to hold together.

The filmed actions are presented in three subsets, forming a triptych of screens:

The assistant-assisted actors and actresses are Sandra Alvarez de Toledo, Béryl Coulombié, Yannik Denizart, Emmanuel Fouché, Philippe Fouché, Adrien Malcor, Martín Molina-Gola, as well as Antoine Astier, Moussa Arda, Natacha Berger, Yann Bréheret, Félix Brieden, Mariette Cousty, Tiphaine Dambrin, Raphael Delannoy, Anna Dubosc, Marie-Christine Fouché, Christine Fougères, Daniel Galicia, François Guinochet, Nayon Lee, Anaïs Masson, Marlon Miguel, Maxence Rifflet, Patricia Som, Marina Vidal-Naquet, Violette a, Thivakar Yogeswaran, Zlata, and the students of the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Lyon.

The artist write about his exhibition at Crac Occitanie:
“Close actions” were first carried out during visits with my father, Philippe Fouché, at the medical institutions in which he has been living since 2015 (hospitals, a rehabilitation facility, a nursing home…) following a stroke that paralysed him on one side. Through gestures, displacements and manipulations of objects found on site, I intensified my relationship with spaces arranged for care, which had
become places of a family life. I acted in Philippe’s vicinity, rather than with him, during waiting times when health professionals were caring for him.

“Close actions” is derived from “close presences”, the expression by which Fernand Deligny designated the non-professionals who, in the middle of the Cévennes from 1967 to the 1990s, watched over autistic children entrusted to them, inventing a way of life with them outside of any institutional framework, on experimental camps dubbed “living areas”.

At the Crac, I also attempted to resume an experiment begun in 2012 with Le Musée antidote, which was a photographic and plastic investigation of the Romanian Peasant Museum in Bucharest. What I call “institutional life” must also overcome what one of the main organisers of the Romanian Peasant Museum, ethnographer Irina Nicolau, calls the “hostpial-museum”, the place where objects only age, separated from their own transformation potentials. The reconstructed studio of Constantin Brâncuși, designed by Renzo Piano right outside the Centre Pompidou, is one of those ambivalent presentation sites that froze in the process of protecting. We walked a “cross-eyed camera” (Deligny) along the studio’s corridors, in pursuit of the androgynous body set in motion by Philippe Fouché.

After the 10-rue-Saint-Luc (the studio of L’Arachnéen), Bétonsalon, MoMA’s Virtual Cinema, the Centre Pompidou Metz, and Parliament gallery, the Crac Occitanie is presenting the sequel to Manifeste Janmari [Janmari Manifesto] entitled Manifeste assisté [Assisted Manifesto]. The exhibition is a new scene of “aberrant memory” (Deligny), structured around a selection of new and old close actions.

Florian Fouché, February 2023

The artist write about his exhibition at Crac Occitanie:
“Close actions” were first carried out during visits with my father, Philippe Fouché, at the medical institutions in which he has been living since 2015 (hospitals, a rehabilitation facility, a nursing home…) following a stroke that paralysed him on one side. Through gestures, displacements and manipulations of objects found on site, I intensified my relationship with spaces arranged for care, which had become places of a family life. I acted in Philippe’s vicinity, rather than with him, during waiting times when health professionals were caring for him.

“Close actions” is derived from “close presences”, the expression by which Fernand Deligny designated the non-professionals who, in the middle of the Cévennes from 1967 to the 1990s, watched over autistic children entrusted to them, inventing a way of life with them outside of any institutional framework, on experimental camps dubbed “living areas”.

More information about the exhibition Fernand Deligny, légendes du radeau.

Top page photo: Exhibition view of « Assisted Manifesto » by Florian Fouché, Crac Occitanie -Sète, 2023. Théâtre du soin, la destruction du service de santé publique, (détail) 2023 © of the artist and courtesy galerie Parliament, Paris. Photo : Aurélien Mole.