This upcoming autumn, Alexis Puget's artist residency in Gdańsk will be taking place as a result of an open call. The residency is being implemented by the City of Strasbourg and Apollonia - European Art Exchanges in partnership with CCA ŁAŹNIA as part of the annual Gdanńk - Strasbourg exchange program.
Alexi Puget’s practice is rooted in a search for the poetic, fictional and cinematographic potential of documentary material gathered during longterm investigations, and ranges from sculptural forms to radio and multimedia installations. His most recent works focus on the human stories unfolding within Internet micro-communities, which he archives, displaces and recontextualises. Alexis explores alternative and/or vernacular strategies for coping with the current affective and social collapses by manipulating infra-ordinary objects and the tales they carry, their heterotopic or uchronic dimension, and by deploying retrofuturistic and science-fictional narratives. He is also committed to the collective dynamics of knowledge sharing, research and production.
While in Gdańsk Alexis plans to carry out an investigation into the city’s radio landscape and architecture. As a port city overlooking the Baltic Sea, Gdańsk is the scene of numerous communications between machines, humans and other-than-humans. Starting with a hertzian field recording practice, using devices that enable him to archive radio transmissions over a wide band of frequencies. He is also interested in the cinematographic potential of the port and architecture, linked to certain Internet ‘trends aesthetics’ that encourage the Internet user to fictionalise and romanticise a fantasised everyday life around banks of images and sounds referencing typologies of places and atmospheres. Using this archiving process as a starting point, Alexis Puget wants to shift this data towards fictional and poetic horizons.
Notable shows: Indistinct Realities. Regionale 24 at House of Electronic Arts in Basel in 2023, Kunstverein Freiburg, in Freiburg and La Chaufferie - galerie de l'École supérieure des arts décoratifs de Strasbourg in Strasbourg. Alexis Puget has been exhibited with Phuong Thao Nguyen and Émilie Mallard. the most recent exhibition was La Bourse Aux Rêves at Doc! in Paris in 2024.
Alexis Pugiet’s residency is part of an ongoing artistic residency exchange project, initiated in 2011 by the Apollonia – European Art Exchanges association from Strasbourg, in collaboration with the City of Strasbourg, the City of Gdańsk, and the ŁAŹNIA Centre for Contemporary Art. Previous editions have featured artists such as Ahmet Dogan, Patrick Bogner, Jia Qiu, Dorothee Haller, Yiumsiri Vantanapindu, Stéphane Clor, Hélène Thiennot, Elise Alloin, Aurélie Pertusot, Laurent Odelain, and Fantine Andrès. Polish artists who have participated include Dominika Skutnik, Dorota Walentynowicz, Michał Pecko, Angelika Fojtuch, Grzegorz Stefański, Urszula Kozak, Eliza Proszczuk, Julita Wójcik, Patrycja Orzechowska, Barbara Gryka, and Anna Kędziora. Last year, the program featured the duo Camille Zisswiller & Nicolas Lefebvre, as well as Hanna Szumska. This year's exchange features Alexis Puget and Jakub Falk.