Chestnut, text
A collaboration with students at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux Arts Lyon:
Agnes Bobor, Nivine Chaikhoun, Gwendoline Dos Santos, Camille Drai, Sarah Dulac, Roxane Esperon, Serena Evely, Jonathan Mahistre, Claire Laborde, Guillaume Ladaviere, Clara Levieuge, Mélissa Marillet, Olivier Milis, Adrien Rocca, and their professor Olivier Vadrot.
The sculpture Utopian Benches, which gathered reconstructions of benches used by American communal societies in a participatory installation, has sired a fellow in the form of a European collection titled Bancs d’Utopie. This new work extends the sharing embodied in the sculptural form and viewer participation of the finished work, backward into the research and fabrication that led on to the realization of this new gathering of benches.
During the course of the four year tour of Utopian Benches in the United States, an accompanying book We Sit Together, Utopian Benches from the Shakers to the Separatists of Zoar was published by the Princeton Architectural Press. Olivier Vadrot who teaches design at the Ecole Nationale Superieur des Beaux Arts in Lyon, France, wishing to teach a class on design in intentional communities came across the book and wrote to ask me if I would run a workshop with his class. Using the workshop to research European intentional communities, we then raised funds to reconstruct benches from eleven communities ranging geographically from Findhorn in Scotland to Kibbutz Hazorea in Israel. Funding provided by Le Familistère de Guise and FRAC Besançon enabled the students to visit communities to document their benches, and then to construct the benches under the guidance of a professional atelier. The European benches are in chestnut, a wood common in France and now uncommon in the United States, where I had used poplar for the reconstruction. Twelve benches were first exhibited in 2015 at FRAC Besançon, the contemporary art museum, from where they traveled to Le Familistère in April 2016 to join eight American Utopian Benches, and accompanying drawings. They have since been shown at further venues, and a thirteenth bench, from the Boimandau community, was added with funding from FRAC Champagne-Ardenne.
Besançon is the birthplace of Charles Fourier, Victor Hugo and Pierre Joseph Proudhon, among other radical thinkers. Le Familistere de Guise was built on Fourierist principles. It is now a museum though, like Oneida Mansion House, it has many apartments still occupied as residences. The benches were exhibited in the communal covered courtyard. The eight American benches, which joined their European counterparts had come to Europe for an exhibition at Steirischer Herbst, Graz, Austria in October 2014 having finished their tour stateside that summer at the Shaker Museum, Mount Lebanon.
As in all venues across the United States, the bench installations are accompanied by a free booklet containing brief descriptions of the participating communities. In addition the benches are used to hold gatherings at which apposite topics are discussed. The last conversation on the benches at Besançon, for example, titled L’utopie, une maladie infantile du socialisme, was led by Edward Castleton who is researching the origins of Pierre Joseph Proudhon’s ideas leading up to the publication of his famous treatise What is Property.
Communities represented by benches in the gathering Bancs d’Utopie:
New Lanark , Scotland
Familistere de Guise, France
Monte Verita, Switzerand
Kibbutz Hazorea, Israel
Findhorn, Scotland
Ardelaine, France
Le Beal, France
Utopiaggia, Italy
Torri Superiore, Italy
La Ferme du Collet, France
Hofkollektiv Wiesrehoisl, Austria
Boimandau, Francis
EXHIBITION VENUES: FRAC Franche-Comte, Besançon, France, 2015; Le Familistère de Guise, 2016; Design Biennial St. Etienne, France; FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, Reims, France; CIVA, Brussels, Belgium, 2017; Baltic 39, Newcastle, UK; Chahuts, Bordeaux; FRAC Grand Large – Hauts-de-France, France, 2018.
An interview: http://newsarttoday.tv/expo/familistere-francis-cape/
Bancs d’Utopie is now in the collection of FRAC Franche-Comté, Besançon, France.
It has been adopted by Patricia Allio and the Association ICE for performances in Dispak Dispac’h at several venues during the early 2000s. Shown here at FRAC Franche-Comté in 2023.
Bancs d’Utopie, Installation FRAC Franche-Comté, Besançon 2015. Photo courtesy FRAC Franche-Comté
Detail of installation FRAC Franche-Comté, Besançon 2015. Photo courtesy FRAC Franche-Comté
Bancs d’Utopie, Installation FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, 2017. Photo courtesy Frac Champagne-Ardenne
Installation of 12 Bancs d’Utopie with 8 Utopian Benches from USA at Le Familistère de Guise, 2016. Photo courtesy La Familistère de Guise
Installation of 12 Bancs d’Utopie with 8 Utopian Benches from USA at Le Familistère, 2016. Photo courtesy La Familistère de Guise
A gathering on benches at Hofkollektiv Wieserhoisl, Austria
Bench in the dining room Utopiaggia, Italy
Bench in the community dining room at Findhorn, Scotland
Some of the students at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux Arts Lyon seated on two of the benches.
A student from the Ecole Nationale des Beaux Arts Lyon working on one of the benches.