English

ETERNAL NETWORK

Founded in 1999 and based in Tours (France), the Non Profit Organization ETERNAL NETWORK implements and organises projects within the field of contemporary art from its definition toward its completion and transmission.

For more than ten years now, ETERNAL NETWORK has been inventing new ways of producing and disseminating contemporary art projects that involve famous and recognised artists not only from France but also from overseas. Having the ambition to offer more opportunity to discover different forms of artistic creation today, Eternal Network has continued to face the outside context that is the real space with its various aspects - the urban environment, historical monuments, and even the countryside and the landscape.

ETERNAL NETWORK brings artistic creation at the heart of current concerns as urban development issues, new ways for social development, economics and environment innovating programs, the process of learning and knowledge sharing or even though focusing on the understanding of memory and its implications on identity. In other words, this philosophy leads toward a contextual analysis from a human and geographical to a cultural dimension, wherein artists’ expertise and mediation are supporting the comprehension of these interconnected issues.

The strategy behind ETERNAL NETWORK is to develop its activity by forming new partnerships and collaborations with other public and private organizations connecting these societal and cultural concerns with contemporary art related institutions, in an attempt to federate complementary strengths all together and thus better understand the overall picture and the process behind these issues.

Since 2012 ETERNAL NETWORK owns a place for exhibitions : Eternal Gallery.

THE NEW PATRONS PROGRAM

(action Nouveaux commanditaires)

The New Patrons program of the Fondation de France gives to all people – independent of financial means, educational or social status – the means to assume responsibility to commission the work of an artist for the general good.
www.newpatrons.eu

STEP 1

THE REASON FOR COMMISSIONING

You have an issue or problem that you share with your colleagues, neighbours or association members, and you believe an art project is the right way to make this public. You then contact your regional mediator, a renowned art curator. In conversations, she or he helps to formulate the content of the project. She or he arranges a meeting with an artist – from the discipline (fine art, architecture, design, music) which you will have chosen together – who is able to give form to your project.

STEP 2

DIALOGUE WITH THE ARTIST

The artist develops a clear proposal in reference to the exchanges that have taken place with the mediator and the patrons.

STEP 3
CREATION OF ARTWORK
With guidance from the mediator, you seek financial, governmental and political support for the project. The patrons, the artist and the mediator all remain involved until the completion of the project. You play an essential role in how the society receives it.

THE MANIFEST OF THE NEW PATRONS
DEFINES THE ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES
of the players who together carry out an action*, the goal of which is the creation of works of art and of their contexts.

THIS MANIFEST PROPOSES

• to every person who wishes it within civil society the means to assume, either singly or in association with others, the role of commissioning a work of art from an artist ; it also proposes to give such persons the means to assume the role of legitimizing an investment in its creation which will be requested of the community. In this way, it is up to the person in question to understand and to state a reason for which art is meant to be.

• to the artists, to create within a real context and to act with the people who will give worth through use to the forms and concepts created.

• to the mediators who establish connections between the works and the public, the possibility also to be mediators between the artist and the patron in person, and, beyond them, among all the players who will happen to be involved. Guaranteeing the respect for the requirements of the demand and of the creative activity, this mediator shall evaluate with the players the relevance and feasibility of the project. He will also suggest the suitable medium and artist as well as offer the technical, legal and financial expertise required to act.

• to the political actors and the trustees of public or private organizations whether they are non profit organizations or not, to take into consideration the initiatives of the patrons and to accept the mediation between them and the community in which the work will establish itself ; they may also, should they so wish, personally assume responsibility for a commission in association with others.

• to researchers in various fields, to put into perspective the undertaken action and to base it on an intelligent reading of the situations at stake the stakes that will be better shared.
In committing to an equal sharing of responsibilities, all players agree to manage through negotiation the tensions and conflicts inherent in public life within a democracy. The work of art thus ceases to be merely the emblematic expression of someone’s individuality to become the expression of autonomous persons who have decided to form a community in order to invent new ways of relating to the world and to give to contemporary creative activity a shared meaning.

François Hers

*the implementation of this Manifest began in 1991.