Jean-Baptiste Ganne

Jean-Baptiste Ganne
Period: 2006-2007
Profession: Plastician Born in Gardanne in 1972. The radical critique of the notion of work (Jappe, Krisis) and its importance in questioning contemporary capitalism have, in a way, confirmed my intuitions about the ways in which the Mediterranean relates to work, not just in Italy, but also in Dalmatia and Provence (to mention familiar places). The Mediterranean has a conception of work as a long process. Daube cooking, for example, is a long process: the work is done alone, over time. The dish gains in flavor and finesse as it is cooked and re-cooked. In a sense, it’s a question of confronting Work – W (Work), i.e. the physical notion of measuring the movement of a body – with “Far Niente”, which is not the situationist “Never work” but rather a “Let things be done”. It’s not a question of coming to study this or that aspect of Italian culture, but of displacing a practice, recontextualizing it and seeing what can come out of it. What emerges will necessarily be a measure of the gap. It’s as if Ingres hadn’t quite painted Italy from his Roman studio.