Société Perpendiculaire's Tapestry Retrospective at Frac Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur

The exhibition 'Société Perpendiculaire: la Tapisserie' at Frac Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur in Marseille (July 6 – September 14, 2002) presents a retrospective of the French art collective Société Perpendiculaire, founded in 1985 after initial meetings in Niort in 1983. The group's name derives from the perpendicular weaving of tapestry warp and weft, a metaphor for their practice. The show includes works by affiliated artists such as General Idea, Filiou, Bublex, Lucariello, Pierre Joseph, Fischli & Weiss, Mike Kelley, and Kippenberger, alongside literary references from Tristram Shandy to Borges. A film program curated by Jean-Marc Chapoulie features documentaries and fiction. The collective's core members—Nicolas Bourriaud, Christophe Duchatelet, Jean-Yves Jouannais, Christophe Kihm, and Laurent Quintreau—operated as a 'mutual insurance company' parodying corporate structures, producing the 'Revue Perpendiculaire' (published by Michalon then Flammarion) and a 'Rapport d'activité 1985-2000' (Images Modernes). The group's stance against Michel Houellebecq led to the journal's cancellation by Flammarion. Despite claiming continued activity, the exhibition serves as a 'joyful burial' for the collective, emblematic of the ephemeral nature of dissident intellectual groups.