2013 was an anniversary of cultural decentralisation in France for the contemporary art centres – structures founded for the most part on a regional basis in the early 1980s. To mark this occasion, DCA wanted to highlight thirty years of research and experimentation with artists, and the transmission of this artistic research to the widest possible audience in the regions.

The online project uncoupdedés.net enabled us to approach institutional decentralisation from the perspective of shifting the boundaries between genres, styles and conventions, since contemporary art centres are constantly reinventing the transmission of knowledge and methods of production. The symbolic and sensitive dimension of decentralisation was considered, preferring to the notions of capital, province, periphery, city, countryside and suburb, those of constellations and archipelagos, as well as territories and audiences that give substance to the challenge of acting under a “new collective sky”.

A singular object produced collectively, uncoupdedés.net gathers contributions from 34 art centres (out of the 50 members of the DCA network in 2013). Each art centre has contributed to the magazine with specific assignments: critical texts, short stories, fiction, essays, letter-writing exchanges, interviews, video, sound and photographic works, online performances, etc. More than 50 key figures have been invited to offer their opinions on the programming of each centre. In turn, visual artists, filmmakers, writers, art critics, art historians, curators, philosophers, anthropologists, graphic designers and even primary school pupils have contributed their views.

These contributions, which vary greatly in form and tone, make up a new panorama of art centres consisting of a host of external perspectives. By de-hierarchising the relationship between the centres, uncoupdedés.net has reasserted the egalitarian spirit in which DCA wishes to work, for it is the diversity of this network that also makes it strong.

Revived in 2014, uncoupdedés.net invited several foreign figures to become editors for a season: Catalina Lozano (Colombia), Zasha Colah (India), Moe Satt (Myanmar) and Manuela Moscoso (Brazil). The aim was for them to put the magazine’s content into perspective and to redefine it through the lens of their own subjectivity and work contexts.

Webiste uncoupdedes.net
Press kit — uncoupdedés.net 2013
Prese release — uncoupdedés.net 2014

uncoupdedés.net was supported by the Ministry of Culture and Communication (Directorate-General for Artistic Creation) and the Île-de-France Region.