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	Reversibility Can you make art that is not a work? Pierre Bal-Blanc “Reversibility” is an ongoing project of which the first part* took place during Frieze Art Fair in London in 2008. On that occasion, in the form of an exhibition, I interrogated the notion of the “mediation” of artworks, which is moreover a function that is generally attributed to a curator. This work of mediation can take the form of an exhibition, of a text, of a staging or choreography, it doesn’t matter; it is a case of making the choice of a temporal conversion of works into another cognitive model, in order to allow the public to approach the work of a number of artists. For an independent curator invited into a commercial context, the choice of the tool of mediation of artworks is confronted with the dominant one which is imposed by the model of the contemporary art fair: the conversion into monetary value and mediation by money. As if in anticipation of the stock-market crash of October 2008, in London, the financial capital of Europe, and as part of Frieze Art Fair, which represents the most speculative version of a fair, I invited the artists participating in the project to de-create one or several of their works. This mediation proposal was accompanied by an exchange of emails between all the protagonists of the project, the representatives and the employees of the gallery included. My intention was not solely to invite the artists to gratuitously destroy their works in order to make mediation, even if this option remained open, and if in itself it constitutes an interesting contradiction in relation to the expectations of curatorial practice (which are, for example, to raise the added-value of the artworks). It was to invite them to reflect, along with me, on the best way of mediating their work in these circumstances. In effect, how to pertinently talk about creation in a context which subordinates this notion to the price that it represents, and which monopolizes all the attention for this price? The intention which I formulated does not, however, propose to completely break with commercial logic. Commercialization in itself is not at stake, it is its hegemonic character. The content of the precise protocol is moreover that the materials of the de-created works remain for sale. The imperative of de-creation proposed an inversion of the process of the artwork, whilst leaving complete freedom as to the choice of retro-process used to extract the artists’ work from it. To summarize it more simply, my proposal was a way of “re-talking” about art in a context which makes use of art in order to talk about something else. The exchanges with the artists and the galleries based on de-creation were converted into dialogue and read out loud on the stand by a young art student from St Martins School of Art during the entire duration of the fair, permitting the visitors to be confronted with the notion of creation by the intermediary of definitions, of concepts and of strategies: deconstruction, destruction, dematerialization, site specificity which all belong to art and exceed it. The detail of the exchanges informed people about the environment, the artists’ propositions and the presence of elements that constituted the stand. If none of these artists followed the protocol to the letter, preferring to propose versions that follow a retro-process whilst keeping the status of an artwork; if none of the clients decided to acquire the materials of the de-created artwork despite the offer proposed on the stand (for example, to acquire the materials used for the artworks of David Lamelas or non-reusable materials of Andrea Büttner at the end of the fair), this does not invalidate the undertaken process as such. This informs us, rather, about artists’ reticence to accept the expropriation of their rights as an author, even if it is beneficial to a valorization of the content of their work. A valorization of the content of the work that, itself, escapes direct commercialization, in order to definitively privilege a mediation of the artwork’s processes. From the collector’s perspective, acquiring materials or matter and not being able to talk about it except in the imperfect: “it was”, is not in the first instance very exciting. However, this narrative form, by de centering the point of view from the finished artwork towards its process, produces a rupture of causality and offers the advantage of clearly denying the relationship between means and ends, fitting to technique (to the cultural industry). The story of the de-creation reminds us that art is anti-technique. If I have organized this de-creation as a theatre, it is not only to extend the theatrical stage of the disfigurement, described by Rancière in his history of abstract painting, to all artistic practices. It is also to demonstrate the reversibility of creation and of de-creation, which are part of the artwork in any circumstance, at the moment of qualification of the creative process as a work of art, and at the occasion of its disqualification as a product or cultural fetish. The notion of de-creation does not suffice by itself; following the example of Deleuze’s de-territorialization and re-territorialization, creation and de-creation are like the inverse and the site of the very same process. The title “Reversibility” lays down the bases of this thought, to which Marcel Duchamp long ago proposed a solution in the form of a question: Can you make works that are not of art? The London exhibition proposed a pursuit of the process in this direction: Can you make art that is not a work? * First issue: “Reversibility”, curated by Pierre Bal-Blanc with Michal Budny, Andrea Büttner, RafaL Bujnowski, Claire Hooper, Michal Kaczynski, David Lamelas, Benoit Maire, Deimantas Narkevicius, Dominique Petitgand, Pratchaya Phinthong, Pia Rönicke, for The Fair Gallery (gb agency, Paris; Hollybush Gardens, Londres; Jan Mot, Bruxelles; Raster, Varsovie) at Frieze Art Fair 2008 New issue: “Réversibilité” at CAC Brétigny from October 18 to December 5. 2009, with Annie Vigier & Franck Apertet, Giasco Bertoli, Robert Breer, Sanja Ivekovic, François Laroche-Valière, Marianne Maric et Rainer Oldendorf. Part of interview with Cédric Schönwald for Play Time, Béton Salon, Paris July of 2009 <