From November 2011 to April 2012, in relation with the Institute's own functioning, this 'Initiation in curating contemporary art exhibitions' has been designed as a complete training module. Upstream of the organisation of the showing of works from the collection, various meetings were organised for students with the professionals of the Institute and also with persons from outside. They thus learned about the history of the institute, the issues involved and its objectives and about the various crafts in contemporary art. They were also shown a historical perspective of the notion of exhibition. Finally, the students were told about the inherent questions of the curating of exhibitions: reflection on scheduling, project design, the definition of artistic choices, etc.
The small group of volunteer students (trained in History of Arts – Art/Institut des Arts/Mission Images and Association ENplaStik !) analysed the curator's role and designed an exhibition of works from the Institute's collection at ENS Lyon's gallery 'La Librairie': 'Temps pis - De la nécessité d’œuvrer malgré tout'. The pun in French covers generational position-taking with time as a theme. Using the expression 'Tant pis' ('too bad') the exhibition has a fundamental meaning—the formulation of reality that is accepted in spite of its deceptive nature. The time theme thus stresses the possibility and above all the need to go beyond the concept of deception and generate new experiments.
'Temps pis - De la nécessité d’œuvrer malgré tout' is the demanding and relevant result of artistic and scientific collaboration between students at an Ecole Normale Supérieure (a 'grande école' for teachers and researchers) and an art centre.
