Numéro, mural review of artists' posters
Laure Maternati/Martine Derain | 1994-1999
Numéro showed propositions made by artists in the space of both the street and the printed page.
Ten issues were published between 1994 and 1999. The first were structured around an individual invitation and the posters were simply placed next to them. The strategy later changed : Numéro 4 was created with artists from Casablanca and Tétouan during a two-month residence in Morocco.
Numéro 5 was conceived with photographers from La Compagnie artists' studio in Marseilles. Numéro 7 was created and printed in 1997 in Leipzig during a workshop organised at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst for final year students: we attempted to work around what we had in common, between here and there, right up to the southern and eastern frontiers of Europe.This issue looked at the expulsion of foreigners, envisaged as an operating methodology at a time where freedom of movement in the ‘Schengen space’ had standardised its specific approach to the detainment of Non-Europeans. The last issue, Numéro 9, created in 1999 with Dalila Mahdjoub, looked at this question again but from the point of view of the detainment centres themselves. She made an inventory of the waiting zones and detention centres in France. A disturbing map appeared: today, the frontier, far from having disappeared, now covers the whole territory.
Numéro was displayed on sites not used for billing commercial advertising but on the walls of public or private property (once an agreement had been obtained). The displays offered a new way of ‘reading’ the town : in Marseilles we followed the bus route leading from the centre of town to the northern districts. All the issues were displayed along this route.
Numéro 4 could be seen in the centre of Casablanca and in Ben M'sik, the working class area where the artists were lived. Numéro 7 was displayed in Leipzig near to government buildings : the Immigrants' Department, Court, University... and on sites in thoroughfares, the airport, stations... Finally, Numéro 9 was shown at Ferney-Voltaire close to the Swiss border, in an exhibition organised by the Museum of Art and History in Geneva, called Figures de l’engagement au tournant d’un siècle (Political figures at the beginning of the century).
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