Mécènes du Sud
Created in 2003, Mécènes du Sud Aix-Marseille is an initiative of economic actors who collectively support contemporary art. Each year, they co-produce works and artistic projects and accompany structuring events on their territory.
Entretien à Palama
Stéphane Barbier Bouvet develops projects using a critical approach that is guided by an economy of gesture and means. His artistic interventions serve as alternatives to observed conventions, using histories, structures, and logic. As a result, he conceives his practice and his productions not as autonomous concepts but as responses to situations. Palama is precisely such a situation that the artist has transformed into a project. It is a 19th-century cabin located in the Massif de l’Étoile (43°22’47’’N, 5°26’07’’E) that, through his efforts, has become a commons. A large part of the artistic project consisted of cleaning and repairing the building while also restoring original features and adding new elements. Today, the cabin is an open and welcoming space whose care and maintenance are based on trust and the responsibility of its users.
Palama is also an artistic exercise that is fundamentally free and relies on intuitions. It encompasses material aspects, such as art installations and interventions, as well as immaterial aspects, such as the links it creates between visitors and users or the interrelations it fosters with its biocenosis. Conceived by the artist as a “machine à penser” to reflect on art today, Palama is a project that literally must be experienced.
