manifesto of fragility – A World of Endless Promise
James Webb – A Series of Personal Questions Addressed to the City of Lyon as it Stands Now, 2022
2024
Sound installation, speaker, audio
Venue
Born 1975 in Kimberley, South Africa.
Lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa, and in Stockholm, Sweden.
Known for his site-specific interventions and sound installations, James Webb seeks to create possible new forms of understanding and communication between artworks and audiences. A Series of Personal Questions Addressed to the City of Lyon as it Stands Now – the artist’s most comprehensive iteration of this series, on display in the courtyard of Lyon’s Fine Arts Museum and in the Parc de la Tête d’Or – consists of loudspeakers that convey a series of questions put to the city and relating to its history, geography and psychology. Although the city does not reply, the piece invites us to consider this vast and complex entity, with its multiple narrative strands, from a fresh perspective.
Also on view at the Fagor factories, the Parc de la Tête d’Or, URDLA and the macLYON.
Commission for the 16th edition of the Lyon Biennale
Artist: James Webb, Voice: Sylvaine Strike
Courtesy of the artist, Galerie Imane Farès and blank projects