Robert Filliou, And so on end so soon (done 3 times), 1977Collection Centre national des arts plastiques

29th October - 15th décembre 2010 Guided tour the 5th december. 15h30. Having trained and worked as an economist, Robert Filliou (1926-1987) began to write poems and plays in the late 1950s. He then found that the visual arts were the field that allowed him to bring together all his work.  He preferred the notion of ‘creation’ to that of ‘art’ that he found too restrictive, so he favoured experimentation over finished form. Developed in the 1960s, his Principleof Equivalence (‘well made’, ‘badly made’, ‘unmade’) and the idea ofPermanent Party (‘eternal network’) was activated as much within texts, performances, assemblages as within life itself. In the late 1970s, the artist found that video was adapted to his desire for dissemination and that it was a medium with which he could test innovative teaching and artistic experiences.

Acquired by the Centre national des arts plastiques (C.N.A.P. or National Centre for Visual Arts) and on long term loan to the Museum since last year, the five works presented here are completed by a series of editions on loan from the Centre des livres d'artistes (Centre of Artist Books) in St Yrieix-la-Perche. Exhibited in various spaces, these five videos vary in length (15 minutes for Telepathic Music No. 7 - The Principle of Equivalence Carried to a Series of 5 to more than an hour for Teaching and Learning as Performing Arts, Part II, Video University) and format. Applying the ‘Principle of Equivalence’ to a film which is virtually endless (And So on End So Soon) or a anthological survey of the artist’s practice (Porta Filliou ­– wordplay on the French ‘portefeuille’ which means ‘portfolio’), these recordings sometimes borrow from the classical conventions of television. But, these resolutely innovative videos reflect upon the characteristics of video as a medium (live, deferred, edited, repeated). They are focussed on the invention of an expanded use of speech and image.