As a sculptor exploring a broad range of media, from texts to photography to posters and video, Michel François was asked to design the 8th Louvain-la-Neuve Biennial of Contemporary Art in 2013. He invited his fellow artist and curator Guillaume Désanges to create with him Une exposition universelle (section documentaire), or World’s Fair (Documentary Section), in other words an exposition that doesn’t celebrate human activities and products that best embody hope and progress but rather—in an underground parking lot no less!—the other side of the coin, the worst, the most illegal, the things the least fitting to be shown of what humanity is capable of producing. This is how the two ended up presenting, among other curiosities, a Zen garden bristling with security cameras, along with research highlighting the most frightening control scenarios.
G. Désanges *1971, Paris, lives and works in Paris
M. François *1956, Saint-Trond, lives and works in Brussels