For over ten years, the Office for abilities and desires has linked the standards of the international art world to the urban structure of Marseilles and its surroundings. By questioning the categories of art and the role of its various actors, by disrupting the habits of artists and the public, the Office has renewed the very core of art's relationship to society.
The dialogue between this demand for modernity and the irresistible magnetism of vernacular cultures inspired a unique mix of artistic and social action. Anchored in the living memory of cultural communities and natural surroundings, the projects presented in this book follow the outline of a city's unique appropriation of contemporary art's challenges.
Rather than wishing above all – and often in vain – Marseilles to jump headlong into the race for innovation, the Office for abilities and desires offers contemporary representations to the powerful realities that persist, stubbornly, beneath the clean slate of modernity. Now that the distinction between nature and culture is being blurred, which in turn is leading us to suspect, like Bruno Latour, that We have never been modern, Marseilles' archaic touch takes on a new flavor and heightened value.
The Office for abilities and desires is a center for the production of contemporary art, founded in Marseilles in 1994. It was enlarged in 2006 with the creation of galerieofmarseille.