Dennis Adams, Saâdane Afif, Olaf Breuning, Gaëlle Boucand, Martin Creed, Al Madani & Akram Zaatari, Aurélien Mole, Tony Regazzoni, Mario García Torres, Kelley Walker, Raphaël Zarka

In response to an invitation from the DRASH association to participate in the production of a DVD featuring interviews with exhibition curators broadcast during the presentation of Curating Degree Zero Archive (June 16–July 8, 2007, at Point Éphémère, Paris), Le Bureau/ proposes the film of the 1972 exhibition, produced at the Kadist Art Foundation. The exhibition presents a selection of works from the Foundation, as well as certain works by young French artists. The context of the interviews, defined by the DRASH association, consists of selecting a corpus of reproductions of works and evoking, through images, one's own work as an exhibition curator. Le Bureau/ chooses to reflect on another way of approaching this work, in line with its collective curatorial practice, by performing a discourse in action: a formal exhibition designed for DVD and the context of the interview.

Inspired by Orson Welles' F for Fake, Le Bureau/ wishes to present a true/false documentary about a true/false exhibition: true, because the exhibition is actually being held at the Kadist Art Foundation; false, because this same exhibition, through various artifice, is contextualized in the early 1970s. The aim is to show works that are anachronistic with the 1970s period, anachronisms revealed by the media used or the subjects. The film is shot in Super 8, with extras/visitors dressed according to their own interpretation of 1970s fashion.

Through the shifts produced in the documentary between the contemporary nature of the works and their historical decontextualization, the film offers a different way of questioning the archive, both in terms of its truth and its constitution, but also in terms of its capacity for translation: making visible something that can no longer be seen. It also questions the role of the curator in the collective unconscious: the person who discovers new trends in art.

Our thanks go to the DRASH association for their invitation, to the Kadist Art Foundation for lending us the works, and to Sandra Terdjman in particular for her help and support. We would like to thank all the artists.

Le Bureau/ : Guillaume Baudin, Marc Bembekoff, Garance Chabert, Aurélien Mole, Julie Pagnier, Céline Poulin, Émilie Villez