Introduction
The Sirens’ Stage is an exhibition by Etienne Chambaud in the framework of Permanent Exhibition, Temporary Collections, a theoretical project by Vincent Normand.
The Sirens’ Stage is developed by the David Roberts Art Foundation in London, Kadist Art Foundation in Paris and Nomas Foundation in Rome. The three exhibitions, interpreted in a different language almost simultaneously at each Foundation (The Sirens' Stage / Le Stade des Sirènes / Lo stato delle sirene), are based on mechanisms of writing and transcription. Translation should be considered both the medium and the shared language of the whole project.
The exhibition takes its title from the mythological sirens’ song which invents itself in the ear of its addressee. Here The Sirens’ Stage is conceived as a group of “written objects”: absent but described, motionless but translated, unique but repeated, mute but transcribed. Excluded from the present time, they only exist in the moment of their transmission into language. Radically detached from the realm of authenticity, each of the three exhibitions attempts to frame a series of exclusions separations and procedures of dispossession. With the promise of producing its own absence as well as the absence of the two other exhibitions' experiences, The Sirens' Stage is a misunderstanding in construction, a negative space failing to be circumscribed.