Mobile Institute
Mobile Institute is an art platform initiated by artists. It is not associated to a specific place and values a more open platform for art development and its various exhibited forms. MI is a flexible interface:
1. As a Platform, MI is a catalyst for networking and creates the conditions in which artists can produce artwork. This specificity makes it stand as a network and a structure.
2. MI develops Projects as an artist group, working in association with established institutions and artists. Through its dynamic behaviour, MI creates specific productions.
3. The Laboratory is an experimental area where the MI utopian vision and research are used as a device for generating projects.
MobileInstitute is suported by :
-Wallonie Bruxelles International (WBI)
-Communauté Française de Belgique
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The « (MI) Mobile In Situ : Mexico » project involved setting up an interactive network of several Mexican entities. The initiative was jointly headed by Mobile Institute, Projet Diligence and TEP (Taller Experimental Plastica), an Experimental Art Workshop based in Monterrey NL. Our primary objective was to work in close partnership with budding Mexican artists, particularly in Monterrey. The key idea was to produce improvised work « in situ » within a given time in selected locations of the city of Monterrey.
TEP played a major role in coordinating and researching ways and means for each project, focusing chiefly on the set up of a structural base and logistics for individual projects. The Mobile in Situ project entailed several phases. The first week involved conferences and location checking. Workshop projects were organised through a series of debates and project elaboration, in the presence of attending artists who actively participated in the decision-making process and development.
Time spent on location was not devised for the construction of a finished artwork display but as a development of events culminating in an exhibition recounting the construction process. This process was experienced as a romantic one, a travel, free experience – an event which would not necessarily include the spectator’s experience with an object. The spectator is not seen, nor is he witnessing an art object.
There were 2 types of productions : The works of art in the desert were assembled scenographically, each work correlating with the other. Situated in a zone with a railway line crossing over it, the Icamole desert became the favourite scene of an abandoned spot, although not altogether devoid of civilisation. The installations punctuated parts of the zone from which other works entered the field of vision. Lived as a three-day experience, the works of art were first constructed and then brought into the desert to take up their position.
Whereas the desert was experienced as a self withdrawal, escaping from the eye of the spectator, the « Hold Up » performance/installation was intended as a direct confrontation with the public and its cultural symbol ; thus bringing together two opposed situations : the attraction of an exotic fugue and the appeal of an unattainable utopia.
Mexico exhibition was to present a process, a common and unique experiment over a given time. It had been agreed that the exhibition would take place in TEP’s hangar (which was used as a studio) at the end of the entire events. Evidence of installations created in the city and desert, as well as the various phases, drafts, performance objects and elements, was presented photographically as part of a global installation.
