about
works
Founded in 2009, It’s Our Playground is the Paris based artist duo made up of Camille Le Houezec (1986) and Jocelyn Villemont (1986). IOP has been developing a body of work on the porosity and circulation of art practices from a broad professional position (as artists, curators, and teachers), a variety of intervention formats and initiatives favoring working with other artists, and a combination of styles and techniques. Along with reappropriating images through online publishing and curating group projects, It's Our Playground’s recent activity has been shifting towards the production of composite visual works in immersive environments. They are represented by Galerie Valentin, Paris.

Solo exhibitions include 'Elle disait bonjour aux machines' at La Villa du Parc in Annemasse, 2019 ; 'Artificial Sensibility' at Bonington Gallery in Nottingham, 2017 ; 'Reconstructive Memory' at Galerie Valentin in Paris. Curated exhibitions include 'Deep Screen' at Parc Saint-LĂ©ger in Pougues-les-eaux, 2015 ; 'Show Room' at Glassbox in Paris, 2016. Group shows include 'Bande Ă  part' at Mrac in SĂ©rignan, 2018 ; 'Site Visit' at Kunstverein Freiburg, 2017, 'Ambiance d’Aujourd’hui' at Mains d’Ɠuvres in Saint-Ouen, 2016.
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itsourplayground@gmail.com


All images courtesy of It's Our Playground 2019


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Brain content (side), 2016 - UV print on dibond. 85 × 75 cm. Brain content (above III), 2016 - UV print on dibond. 88 × 98 cm. Brain content (front), 2016 - UV print on dibond. 98 × 75 cm. Brain content (above II), 2016 - UV print on dibond. 90 × 98 cm. Brain content (rear), 2016 - UV print on dibond. 98 × 75 cm. Brain content (above II), 2016 - UV print on dibond. 88 × 98 cm.

MENTAL MATTER

Les Bains douches, Alençon, France, 2016
You don’t have a memory? Rent one or more,” the philosopher Jean-François Lyotard declared in the catalogue to the 1985 Les ImmatĂ©riaux event at the Pompidou Center in Paris—in the chapter on artificial memories. He adds, “The great process of exteriorization of memories (inclusion in a bank of some kind), in this instance artistic, has begun. Memory once haunted us; now one accesses it, consults it. One can even get ‘artist pages’ on demand: the imaginary museum. Beginnings of a solution to the infernal question of storage. But what is the machine that handles sensibility?
Most of the time the stroboscopic stream that spreads over our screens yields constellations of appealing images, colors, shapes, and textures; the materials, names of artists, sources, and exhibition venues are mixed together. Our capacity for concentration is increasingly akin to hyper-attention, and our hyperactive gray matter demands constant stimulation, ingests ever greater amounts of content that our human memory alone is not enough to retain. Comparing the human body to hardware and behavior to software, the sociologist Theodor H. Nelson drew a parallel between the Human and the Machine when computer and technological developments were in their infancy in the 1960s. Since then our central processing unit seems to have developed nerve cells that are better adapted to our new way of consuming images, enabling quicker assimilation and storage.

Thus our neurons are apparently raising up part of our encephalon into a kind of Adobeℱ series containing a software program for touching up photos, another for page-layout, and a third for graphic design in the service of our memories. Our brain possesses the necessary resources then for transforming the surplus of artworks into a raw material. The collages resulting from these operations, displayed here on the kinds of cloth backdrops generally used by photographers, will become digitized data that will in turn serve as possible material for fashioning new works of art. This is the ecosystem of Mental Matter, which will make our skull a limitless exhibition space."


FRENCH VERSION

« Vous n’avez pas de mĂ©moire ? Louez-en une ou plusieurs. » dĂ©clarait le philosophe Jean-François Lyotard dans le catalogue de la manifestation Les ImmatĂ©riaux au Centre Pompidou de Paris en 1985. Au chapitre des mĂ©moires artificielles. Il poursuit : « Commence le grand processus d’extĂ©riorisation (de mise en banque) des souvenirs, ici artistiques. La mĂ©moire nous habitait ; maintenant, on y accĂšde, on la consulte. On peut mĂȘme obtenir des « pages-artistes » sur demande : musĂ©e imaginaire. DĂ©buts d’une solution Ă  l’infernale question du stockage. Mais quelle est la machine qui se charge de la sensibilitĂ© ? »

Du flux stroboscopique qui s'Ă©tale sur nos Ă©crans, rĂ©sulte la plupart du temps, des constellations d’images attirantes, de couleurs, de formes, de textures ; les matĂ©riaux, les noms d’artistes, les sources, les lieux d’exposition se mĂ©langent. Notre capacitĂ© de concentration s’apparente de plus en plus Ă  de l’hyper-attention, notre matiĂšre grise hyperactive demande une stimulation constante, ingĂšre toujours plus de contenu que notre mĂ©moire humaine seule ne suffit Ă  retenir. En comparant le corps humain Ă  du hardwareÂł et le comportement Ă  du software, le sociologue Theodor H. Nelson rapprochait, au dĂ©but du dĂ©veloppement informatique et technologique dans les annĂ©es 1960, l'Humain de la Machine. Depuis, notre unitĂ© centrale semble avoir dĂ©veloppĂ© des cellules nerveuses mieux adaptĂ©es Ă  notre nouveau mode de consommation des images et permettant une assimilation et un stockage plus rapides.

Nos neurones Ă©rigeraient ainsi une partie de notre encĂ©phale en une sorte de suite Adobeℱ contenant un logiciel de retouche photo, un logiciel de mise en page, un autre de conception graphique au service de notre mĂ©moire. Notre cerveau possĂšde donc les ressources nĂ©cessaires pour transformer le trop-plein d’Ɠuvres d’art en matĂ©riaux brut. Les collages rĂ©sultants de ces opĂ©rations, accompagnĂ©s de fonds en tissus gĂ©nĂ©ralement utilisĂ©s par les photographes, deviendront ensuite des donnĂ©es numĂ©riques qui serviront Ă  leur tour de matiĂšre potentielle pour composer des Ɠuvres d’art. Tel est l’écosystĂšme de Mental Matter qui fera de notre boite crĂąnienne un espace d’exposition sans limite.