Eric Baudelaire, The Secession Sessions

Exhibition view of "The Secession Sessions", a project by Eric Baudelaire. Bétonsalon - Centre for art and research, Paris, 2014. © Ségolène Thuillart

Abkhazia is some­thing of a paradox: a country that exists, in the phys­ical sense of the word (a ter­ri­tory with bor­ders, a gov­ern­ment, a flag and a lan­guage), yet it has no legal exis­tence because for almost twenty years it was not rec­og­nized by any other nation state. And so Abkhazia exists without existing, caught in a lim­inal space, a space in between real­i­ties. Which is why my letter to Max was some­thing of a mes­sage in a bottle thrown at sea.

How do you build a new State? Does the State include? Does it exclude? On what cri­teria can a State be con­sid­ered to exist? And what forms of rep­re­sen­ta­tion allow, or prove, this exis­tence to be “real”? If all States are fic­tional col­lec­tive con­structs, what to make of Abkhazia: a fic­tion within a fic­tion?

Abkhazia seceded from Georgia, in the Caucasus, during a civil war in 1992-1993. Like all dis­puted lands, Abkhazia is entan­gled in a con­flicted nar­ra­tive. To many Georgians, the break­away State is a rogue nation­alist regime, an ampu­tated part of Georgia. To the Abkhaz, inde­pen­dence saved them from cul­tural extinc­tion after years of Stalinist repres­sion and Georgian dom­i­na­tion. To many observers, Abkhazia is simply a pawn in the Great Game Russia and the West have always played in the Caucasus. “The Secession Sessions” acknowl­edges these com­peting nar­ra­tives and does not seek to write an impos­sible objec­tive his­to­ri­og­raphy. It does not parse, verify or doc­u­ment any com­peting claims to a land. The pro­ject starts with this obser­va­tion: Abkhazia has had a ter­ri­to­rial and human exis­tence for twenty years, and yet it will in all like­li­hood remain in limbo for the fore­see­able future, which makes the self-con­struc­tion of its nar­ra­tive some­thing worth exploring. If Abkhazia is a lab­o­ra­tory case for the birth of a nation, then its Garibaldis and George Washingtons are still alive and active. Maxim Gvinjia is one of them.

When I dropped an envelope in a mailbox in Paris a year ago, I fully expected that a letter addressed to Maxim Gvinjia, former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sukhum, Republic of Abkhazia, would come straight back to my studio with the notice “des­ti­na­tion unknown.” But to my sur­prise, ten weeks later, I got an email from Max telling me he had received my letter, but could not reply on paper since the post office in Abkhazia cannot handle inter­na­tional mail. I have no idea how or why my letter arrived.” Eric Baudelaire

“The Secession Sessions” is con­ceived as a series of invi­ta­tions, ini­ti­ated by French artist Eric Baudelaire, to inves­ti­gate the ques­tion of state­hood through the prism of the state­less state of Abkhazia. The exhi­bi­tion is com­posed of var­ious ele­ments: reg­ular public office hours at the Anembassy of Abkhazia cre­ated at Bétonsalon for the dura­tion of the exhi­bi­tion, and staffed by Maxim Gvinjia, former Foreign Minister of Abkhazia; daily screen­ings of a new film by Eric Baudelaire titled Lost Letters to Max; and a pro­gram of talks, public events and classes with scholars and artists from var­ious back­grounds, exploring the issues at stake in “The Secession Sessions”.

LOST LETTERS TO MAX

A film by Eric Baudelaire with Maxim Gvinjia
Screenings from Tuesday to Friday at 3pm and 5pm, and on Saturday at noon

Each day, the film Lost Letters to Max will be pro­jected. The method­ology of the film came from serendipity: sending the first letter was a kind of joke, a wink to the world of Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi that Maxim Gvinjia seemed to inhabit. But fic­tion has pen­e­trated the real. And so Eric Baudelaire launched on a letter writing cam­paign, 74 let­ters sent over 74 days, a script for a voiceover to a film in which Max becomes the nar­rator. The film will be struc­tured by this exchange: let­ters that should not have arrived and yet somehow reached Max, his recorded responses, and images that Eric Baudelaire filmed in Abkhazia once their cor­re­spon­dence ended.

THE ABKHAZIAN ANEMBASSY

With Maxim Gvinjia, former Foreign Minister and Anambassador of the Abkhazian Republic in Paris
Open from January 9 to February 8, from Tuesday to Saturday, 11am to 3pm and on Saturdays from 11a m to noon

Every day, Maxim Gvinjia, the Anambassador, will hold reg­ular office hours at Bétonsalon. He will make use of the space as he pleases. He may host events, greet vis­i­tors, hold dis­cus­sions and invite guests. The Anembassy is a per­for­mance (can it be called any­thing else?); it is not offi­cial and it has no func­tion in an oper­a­tional sense. It will operate as a ritual that is both real (after all, Max was Foreign Minister) and a fic­tion, but a fic­tion meant in a very polit­ical sense: fic­tion as a ter­ri­tory of resis­tance for those who are given no space in the real.

THE SATURDAY SESSIONS

On Saturday at 3pm

A pro­gram of weekly Saturday after­noon talks, public events and work­shops, with scholars and artists exploring the issues at stake in “The Secession Sessions” beyond the ques­tion of Abkhazia per se.

Scenography: Est-ce ainsi
Graphic design: Camille Baudelaire

Download the presse release

This exhi­bi­tion is a copro­duc­tion of:
Bétonsalon – Centre d’art et de recherche
Bergen Kunsthall / 17.01 – 16.02 2014
Argos, Centre for Art and Media / 2015
UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAM/PFA) / 04-22.02 2015

In part­ner­ship with Kadist Art Foundation

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Lost Letters to Max has received sup­port from the Image/Movement grant from Centre national des arts plas­tiques.