castillo/corrales (2013 - 2016)

"Was a co-operatively run, non-profit contemporary art venue that includes an exhibition space, a bookstore and a publishing house. Established since 2007 in Paris – Belleville, it was managed by a group of artists, curators, writers and graphic designers. castillo/corrales was conceived as a new type of art institution, one that provides artists, professionals and audience with an intimate and informal environment conducive to experimentation, discussion and learning."

I met castillo/corrales future team in an exhibition called "société anonyme" at Le Plateau, Paris. It was Thomas Boutoux, François Piron and Benjamin Thorel among others who had co-curated the show and they would soon move into a small space in Bellville, Paris that they called castillo/corrales. I came to the exhibition with the tv-tv network. We had a lot of exchange with the future castillo/corrales team and I think they were partly inspired for their own organisation by how tv-tv was organised as both a network of independent editors and as a community of artist. castillo/corrales were very inspired by the French political anthropologist Pierre Clastres who in his book Society Agains the State, came up with the concept of "headless leader" inspired by indigenous tribes he had followed in Paraguay and Brazil. The concept was basically to avoid any leader or leading position and if someone had to be a leader it would be a temporary position assigned by the group. This was - in Clasteres' mind the only way of braking the hegemony of hierarchical society-system that we are born into. He is citing Nietzsche saying: "we are taught to submission rather than to independence". 

We made several project together while I was living in Denmark and I joined the permanent team in 2013, a critical time when the institution was changing, growing and outgrowing itself. We closed castillo/corrales permanently the 31/12 2015, partly because we felt it was no longer a place for meeting and exchange but just another venue in Paris Belleville area.