critical+companies

Rose Marie Barrientos (one of our aacorn members) has written a delightful and very informative piece on Yann  Toma and his critical company Ouest Lumiére, which I thought I would share here. [|OuestLumiereandYannToma.pdf] What I find fascinating is all the developmental spirals that Yann went through to get Ouest Lumiére to its current state. The company has been running for some 17 years now, and in many ways provides a stellar example of how a sophisticated artistic gaze can challenge, illuminate, and uplift contemporary corporate thinking. The more I explore Lumiére’s labyrinths, the more I’m coming to rethink and re-view what I know about organizational and industrial life. Yann’s work is also a wonderful take on business history. There are many referents, visual and analogical, to the industrial era, and these are skillfully linked to contemporary practices. The many inversions (e.g., the Bollywood paintings, the Russian names, the whole inverted business model, the changing of what it means to be a ‘light’ company, etc.) are woven together in such amazing ways. Rose Marie, many thanks for taking the time to chronicle this great project! Daved The Ouest-Lumière Company website: [|http://ouestlumiere.free.fr] Art & Flux research line: http://cerap.univ-paris1.fr/spip.php?rubrique68&lang=en Yann Toma’s gallery work: http://www.patriciadorfmann.com/