Search results for ""actes sud""

Devised for Château La Coste, Mater Earth takes us into the heart of humanity and the myths of creation. Prune Nourry created a monumental sculpture representing a pregnant work emerging from the earth, an immersive installation based on the principles of eco-responsible architecture. The work was first imagined back in 2010, when the artist invited a pregnant woman to pose in a bath of milk for a photography session. From those images of serenity, she created a life-size sculpture. Prune Nourry was instantly seized by a desire to produce a larger scale version of the work but it took several years of reflection before the desire became reality. The book follows the creation of the statue in situ, offering readers an original experience of symbolic rebirth. The work brings an inside view of the project and the mysteries of its conception, situating Mater Earth in Prune Nourry’s rich and varied career. We see the stages of its development towards an ideal of “ultracollective chaos” involving multiple artists and artisans, as well as Prune Nourry’s own ethical and ecological reflections and self-questioning. The work provides a rare vision of the gestation of creation, a window onto the creative process, showing everything that nourished the project and brought it to life. The illustrations resonate with this birthing process, creating a catalogue of the cultural and artistic motifs that inspired the work. Nancy Huston’s journal provides sensitive, thoughtful insight into maternity, reflecting the slow metamorphosis of all works of creation.

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Founded 20 years ago in London by the dancer and choreographer Akram Khan (born 1974) and the producer Farooq Chaudhry, Akram Khan Company has become one of the most dynamic troupes on the international contemporary dance scene. Trained in Kathak, Khan has created an innovative choreographic language that fuses the vocabulary of traditional Indian dance with contemporary dance. His performances also feature collaborators from a vast array of disciplines: he has collaborated with the dancer Sylvie Guillem, the actress Juliette Binoche, the artists Antony Gormley and Anish Kapoor, the choreographer and dancer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Israel Galvan and Kylie Minogue, among others. This beautifully illustrated book is the first monograph on Khan, appraising two decades of his ceaseless production and the 26 pieces created by Akram Khan Company since its foundation.

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For forty years, life in Afghanistan has been shaped by wars, the destruction of heritage, terrorist attacks, everyday fears and hopes, and migrations. In 2001, the Taliban government was overthrown by an international coalition bringing hopes of stability and reconstruction. The intervention did not however bring total peace. In this period of optimism, a number of international creation programs were set up as young Afghan artists returned from exile. Artists in the country - either self-taught having grown up under a Taliban regime that banned images, or trained during their exile - had no heritage to take on and no classical rules to break: anything seemed possible. Kharmohra is named after a gland taken from a donkey's neck that, on drying, becomes as hard as stone and is said to bring happiness by making the owner's most secret dreams come true. The metaphor is used to show how contemporary Afghan art is a long way from the romantic expectations with which Westerners often approach the country. The artists explore a wide variety of forms and media to express the horror of terrorism and the omnipresent shadow of death looming over the hostile urban environment. The works stand as an often humorous testimony to the peace that was promised but never delivered and the bitter illusions this fostered. All express a spirit of revolt against the most oppressive traditional forces that repress women and homosexuals as well as the Hazara ethnic group. Through their artistic practices, the artists show how salvation, however slight, is achievable.

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Explores the history of street artist JR’s work in Brazil, focusing in particular on his Giants series The photocollages of French artist JR (born 1983) have populated streets and skylines all over the world. But he decided to outdo himself at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio by creating what he called ‘his craziest work ever’: the Giants series. Perched on scaffolding, gigantic athletes leaped over abandoned buildings and swan-dived into the ocean. And, while his Giants were on show, the ‘Inside/Out’ photo booth was zapping out supersized prints of enthusiastic games-goers. This volume explores the history of JR’s work in Brazil, beginning in 2008 with his work in Rio’s favelas and continuing today at the Casa Amarela, a culture and education centre for kids. Focusing particularly on the Giants series, the book offers insights into how the artist transforms places and spaces by focusing on the daily lives of their inhabitants.

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Illustrates Menchari's intricate, ornate oeuvre. Joseph Akel, L''OfficielFor more than 30 years, Leïla Menchari (born 1928) was responsible for designing the traffic-stopping window displays at Hermès' prestigious flagship store at 24 rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré in Paris. Menchari's aesthetic vision and her sense of color and texture created magnificent installations that brought the best out of silk and leather. Born in Tunis and considering herself a citizen of the world, Menchari was inspired by her journeys to the Near and Far East, her encounters with extraordinary figures of the art world and her Beaux-Arts training. For Hermès she created Egyptian archaeological sites with sand and crumbling statues and iconic scenes of Paris with monuments crafted out of organza, among many other fantasies. Featuring a preface by Hermès CEO Axel Dumas, this extensively illustrated, sumptuous publication focuses on 137 Hermès storefronts created by Leïla Mencha

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For Colombian architect Simon Vélez (born 1949), botany has been inextricable from architecture. His work has been significantly determined by his country's tropical resources, in particular its lush vegetation and abundance of guadua bamboo--a common species throughout the valleys of Colombia. Working in close collaboration with the engineerconstructor Marcello Villegas, Vélez has devised bamboo buildings that are extraordinary not only in appearance but also in their structural simplicity, and in their suitability for scenarios in which construction tools and resources are minimal. Vélez has so successfully popularized guadua bamboo that today even his wealthiest clients are commissioning luxury residences in this material formerly associated with peasant dwellings. He has also successfully persuaded numerous public administrations, town councils and businesses concerned about the environmental impact of their activities to adopt and promote guadua bamboo; he has designed bamboo buil

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The King’s kitchen garden was created by La Quintinie in 1678 on a plot of land nearby the Château de Versailles to provide fruit and vegetables for Louis XIV’s dinner table to the Sun King’s great delight. The whole garden covers nine hectares and is composed of a sequence of smaller plots, garden chambers whose walls and terraces control exposure to the sun and create microclimates to diversify production. La Quintinie was able to cultivate and harvest figs, melons, asparagus, peaches, plums, pears and more, sometimes even out-of-season. The King’s kitchen garden is also a secluded haven, sheltered by high stone walls and foliage, conducive to daydreaming and letting time stand still. A listed national monument, it has been open to the public since 1991. Today the ethos of the King’s kitchen garden is to protect the living world and the diversity of species. It contains roughly four hundred and fifty varieties of fruit and four hundred varieties of vegetable. It has conserved its triple function as a place of cultivation, experimentation into new techniques and training in gardening. Today it welcomes students from the national school of gardening, who are allotted plots for their own practical endeavors, as well as courses in gardening theory and practice. The garden has been growing and teaching for more than three hundred years without interruption. Walking the alleys between the plots we sense the history of this magnificent royal garden and the people who have made it what it is over the centuries. This extensively illustrated book tells that story and brings the garden alive to readers. The first edition dates back to 2003. This new bilingual edition takes into account recent intervening evolutions at the garden.

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Today, waste management – especially plastic – on a global scale is more worrying than ever. The Democratic Republic of Congo stands among countries most affected by the lack of accountability of manufacturers relocating and outsourcing huge landfills on its soil. Ranked as the 8th poorest population in the world despite their country’s immense mineral wealth, the Congolese people is overrun by garbage left by goods produced with their own resources and labor but yet designed for others. A folk-art movement was born from the junkyards of Kinshasa. Dressed in masks and costumes made from rubbish, a generation of street children and artists from Kinshasa's Academy of Fine Arts have come together to create “Ndaku ya la vie est belle”. Founded in 2015 by visual artist Eddy Ekete, this art collective brings together 25 creators who draw their inspiration from ancestral clothing arts to stand against the ecological disaster their country suffers. To amplify their struggle and celebrate their craft, Stéphan Gladieu creates a series of totemic portraits merging documentary photography with artistic practice. In a live studio set up on the streets of Kinshasa, he highlights the militant artists’ surrealist silhouettes and vibrant creations. Introduced by novelist Wilfried N'sondé, these portraits tell a story of creative talent passed on despite the attacks of consumerism.

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Since a young age, Lorenzo has delighted audiences with his spectacular horsemanship and stunning equestrian shows. Over the years, increasing numbers of horses, black and white, have taken the stage with him, whirling dervishes of energy and virtuosity performing to perfection in spectacles imbued with poetry and magic. At the final curtain, every show is greeted with lengthy standing ovations. Because what the audience has witnessed is not just Lorenzo’s technical prowess but a unique relationship between artist and horse. Through the sensitive lense of the Swiss photographer Heini Heitz, we follow Lorenzo at his secret ranch in the Camargue and also in the arena in performance. He talks about his special relationship to his horses, and how he trains sixteen at a time in total freedom to create his incredible feats of showmanship. We discover how he works with foals, how he lives alongside horses, and what they become in their retirement. We also meet Lorenzo the instructor teaching equestrian acrobatics to increasing numbers of young people while constantly inventing new figures to astound us in the arena.

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In Borders, Jean-Michel André questions the notion of border, a question which takes the form of a wandering, whose starting point is in the Jungle of Calais on the eve of the evacuation of the slum in 2016. André pursued the project over three years in France, Italy, Spain and Tunisia - anywhere there were refugees in search of shelter, anywhere there were men, women and children brought together by the same hope of crossing one final stretch of water. With these images of the Jungle, he mixes various fragments of landscapes to form a visual palimpsest. These silent places never cease to signify partition, rupture and desolation and exhale the vertigo of emptiness. Desires from elsewhere become dust and smoke in these spaces where the human figure, photographed isolated and from behind, is located on a threshold, between reality and imagination, memory and present. With accompanying texts by writer Wilfried N’Sondé, whose novels follow similar themes, together André and N’Sondé combine their disciplines the creation being Borders which is neither a linear series nor narrative – rather a collection of works.

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For many years now the company La Machine has been creating shows featuring fascinating giant machines which delight huge audiences of young and old alike in the cities of France and around the world. Gradually, these performing machines have become permanent installations in cities around France, an integral and integrated feature of urban development. Through four emblematic projects in Nantes, La Roche-sur-Yon, Toulouse and Calais, François Delarozière demonstrates how the elegant dynamics of this mechanical bestiary relates to space and to human performers. He speaks of the machines’ creation and charts the daily lives of the company, its members, artists, technicians and artisans and how they undertake such visionary projects of mechanical urban architecture working in tandem with local authorities. After the book La Machine spectacle, here is Machines de ville, highlighting the machines which have slipped into people’s daily lives, churning out dreams, sparking discussion, stirring emotions and reflecting us back to our own humanity by their mere presence in the city.

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The second volume of the Lambert Collection Icons series collects some of the finest works by one of America’s foremost abstract painters, and narrates the creation of his paintings from compositional elements to their “activation” in exhibition spaces. Robert Ryman (1930-2019) was a giant of minimalist painting. He settled in New York in 1952, initially aspiring to a career as a jazz musician. Alone he discovered art, visiting the city’s myriad museums and galleries, and taught himself to paint. In a career spanning 60 years, Ryman relentlessly pared down the essentials of painting and its emotional possibilities. Stroke by stroke, line by line, work by work, Robert Ryman tells the story of the creation of his paintings in its totality from the elements within them to their activation in exhibition spaces or in works - “It was never an intention of mine to make white paintings,” he told Art News magazine in 1986. “The white is just a means of exposing other elements. White enables other things to become visible.” - Robert Ryman

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At the invitation of the town of Cannes, renowned German artist Nils-Udo, pioneer of Land Art, will create several ephemeral installations this summer on Ile Sainte- Marguerite, the largest of the Lérins Islands, an exceptionally preserved natural site at the heart of the French Riviera. The event will be immortalised through a collection of original photographs that will complete the monographic exhibition dedicated to the links between Nils-Udo, the Mediterranean and the islands. Through his installations on water, mossy wooden rafts, fleeting installations of turf, flowers and bamboo on the infinite scope of the Mediterranean, the visitor will be taken to Italy and the Spanish islands in order to look with fresh eyes upon the beauty, but also the fragility, of these sites. This exhibition, curated by Frédérique Citéra-Bulot, director of the Musées de Cannes, will take place in the spectacular location of the Musée de la Mer, in the Fort Royal de l’Ile Saint-Marguerite rooms dedicated to contemporary photography.

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In the USA, the dozens of Monsanto sites have been classified as sensitive zones by the Federal Environmental Agency due to the sites’ activities, which have already had grave consequences for human health and for the environment. For the sake of mankind and the environment, scientists and institutions have sounded the alert.This photographic investigation sets out to observe Monsanto site practices in order to understand the impact of their activities on people and the environment. The jury’s unanimous choice for the Dummy Book Award at the Fotobook Festival Kassel 2016, the book offers a photographic journey through the past and present of the chemical industry. Using an original graphic approach, it brings together archive documents, as well as portraits and landscapes of the people and places affected by the environmental consequences of the Monsanto sites’ production. The book was also commended by the Luma Dummy Book Award jury at the Rencontres photographiques d’Arles 2016.

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En 2021 publicó el libro Comme nous existons en Actes Sud: la autora relata su infancia y su adolescencia, las normales de una joven de origen inmigrante y obrero. ?Una autobiografía conmovedora?, para France Culture. Un texto de ?prodigioso esplendor?, para Télérama. Kaoutar Harchi explica haber roto, definitivamente, con la obra de ficción y la forma novelística.

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More than two hundred charcoal drawings make up this tongue-in-cheek handbook of bad life advice in broken english . These satirical phrases, sometimes funny, sometimes right, aim to make us live the good life . A basic guide, simple, elementary, terribly humorous and refreshing. This work appears on the occasion of two exhibitions at the Aargauer Kunsthaus in Aarau and at the Ferme des Tilleuls in Renens. Its design is produced by the graphic design office NORM in Zurich. Augustin Rebetez is a Swiss artist who builds a powerful and sprawling universe that can be discovered in exhibitions, shows or in books. He notably published Le Coeur entre les dents - Primitive Manifesto with Actes Sud in 2020. Label Rapace

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Notice to cat lovers! This photographic series is a tribute, made of humor and witchcraft, to felids of all races. Gleaned from the internet, nonchalantly retouched in Photoshop, these images show stupid and demonic creatures. But it is ultimately a satirical portrait of our society that the artist mischievously portrays in this book, produced for two exhibitions at the Aargauer Kunsthaus in Aarau and the Ferme des Tilleuls in Renens and designed by the graphic design office NORM in Zurich. Augustin Rebetez is a Swiss artist who builds a powerful and sprawling universe that can be discovered in exhibitions, shows or in books. He notably published Le Coeur entre les dents - Primitive Manifesto with Actes Sud in 2020. Label Rapace

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Lan Cook (Author) Lan joined Usborne after working as a bookseller. She absolutely loves learning about anything and everything. She has lived in China, attempted to create the perfect aquarium biotope, studied Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at Cambridge University, and can hit an archery target from 100 feet away. Lan has always loved collecting knowledge and as many weird facts as possible, so working for Usborne really is a dream job!Laurent Kling (Illustrator) Laurent Kling started his career as an illustrator in the 2000s. He works mainly for young people, where he is called upon to make historic or scientific subjects more fun, and his clients have included Bayard, Fleurus, Milan and Larousse Actes Sud. He has also had comic books published in Canada by Editions de la Pastèque.

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