Date: Fri, 07 Jan 2000 18:06:56 +0100
Subject: consonni presents El Gran Trueque




     consonni presents

     [Image]

     El Gran Trueque
     Matthieu Laurette
     Bilbao,

     from the 3rd of january,2000


     consonni is pleased to present its last production, El Gran
     Trueque (The Great Exchange), a project by Matthieu Laurette.

     --------------------------------------------------------------

                              Press Release

               consonni presents

               El Gran Trueque

               Matthieu Laurette

               Bilbao, from the 3rd of January, 2000


               On Canal Bizkaia (Canal 48) from Saturday to
               Thursday, 6 times a day. And on Saturdays and
               Sundays at 14:20.

               In the press and the media, every day.

               On the Internet www.consonni.org/elgrantrueque

               El Gran Trueque Hotline: + 34 944 407 707


               El Gran Trueque (The Great Exchange), which can be
               seen on television and in the media, offers the
               audience a genuine process of exchanges: a series of
               'multiple swaps'. This project puts advertising
               rhetoric, television formats and marketing
               strategies into practice. Matthieu Laurette has
               decided to devote part of the production budget, of
               his project, to purchasing a new car worth
               1,013,000,- Ptas., which is what is being offered in
               the first Great Exchange. The audience is invited to
               propose by phone an object that they would buy for
               the exchange. Only the highest offer is selected.
               The proposed object is purchased and then exchanged
               with the object at stake each week: in the shops in
               Bilbao, before television cameras, and the media.
               The object that has been purchased, and exchanged,
               becomes in turn the Great Exchange of the following
               week. So, El Gran Trueque begins with the exchange
               of a car and will undoubtedly finish, after a few
               months, with the exchange of a variety of ridiculous
               objects.

               Matthieu Laurette intervenes in what is the basic
               element of the trading system: the regulated circuit
               of products and values. The purchase of an object,
               which has less value, becomes a medium of exchange
               to obtain an object that is worth more. These
               exchanges demonstrate the logic of profit turned
               inside out: an accumulated loss that makes the
               equivalent relation existing between the value of
               the initial object that is exchanged, and the last
               one, illogical. By using television as a medium and
               by questioning the criteria that establish the
               exchange, Matthieu Laurette goes beyond questioning
               the status of the work. He bases his work
               ambiguously on the relations that exist between the
               media and the market, and deals with one of the
               contemporary options in art.

               A pamphlet distributed in 150,000 homes, throughout
               Bilbao, provides all the inhabitants of the city
               with information on the project. El Gran Trueque
               programme presents the object of the week every day
               from the 3rd of January onwards, and the exchanges
               from the 14th of January 2000, at lunch time on
               Saturdays and Sundays on Canal Bizkaia (A Bilbao
               television channel). El Gran Trueque is presented by
               Alicia San Juan and reaches more than 50,000
               households every day. The first object to be bid on
               is a new car.

               ----------------------------------------------------

               consonni is a production structure based in Bilbao.
               It works primarily on creative processes, and on the
               involvement of the artist in the real world. Since
               1997, it has produced projects by numerous
               international curators and artists including Rainer
               Oldendorf, Jon Mikel Euba, Catsou Roberts and Asier
               Pérez González. The projects that have been
               undertaken up to now have focused on
               multidisciplinary artistic experiments that
               encourage artists to get involved in contemporary
               social, economic, political and media fields.
               ----------------------------------------------------

               Matthieu Laurette was born in 1970 in Villeneuve St.
               George (France). He lives and works in Paris and in
               Bilbao. Together with a strategy of Appearances in
               the media, his work falls within a context that
               makes use of the economic workings of society.
               www.laurette.net

               Recent projects:
               1999:Rebecca Bournigault, Matthieu Laurette, Marie
               Sester, Three French artists explore the unseen, New
               Langton Arts, San Francisco; Equinox Now, Geffen
               Contemporary, MOCA Los Angeles; Le capital, CRAC,
               Sète; Efficace et commode, Propositions 99 pour la
               Collection, CAPC Musée, Bordeaux; Patchwork in
               Progress, monographic exhibition, Mamco, Geneva.
               1998:Premises: invested spaces in visual arts,
               architecture and design from France, 1958-1998,
               Guggenheim Museum Soho, New York; Applaus, Casco
               Projects, Utrecht. Free sample 2, Fondation Cartier
               pour l'Art Contemporain, Paris.
               Matthieu Laurette is currently taking part in the
               exhibition Crash! Corporatism and Complicity at the
               ICA  in London.

               ----------------------------------------------------

               Press information and photos, contact Franck
               Larcade: T+34 944 432 390 / F+34 944 700 192
               consonniApdo correos 1441 E-48080 -  email:
               info-AT-consonni.org -  web www.consonni.org
               ----------------------------------------------------

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