Turning and turning in the widening gyre; The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world”, wrote the poet W. B. Yeats in the aftermath of World War I, then known as the “war to end all wars”. One hundred years later, a deep sense of lack of direction pervades again. Yet, should the centre still hold? Or is this the opportunity for a rebalancing of power?

Notions of “centre” and “periphery” and their dynamics of influence, subordination or conflict appear inadequate to interpret accurately our current times. Le centre ne peut tenir, Lafayette Anticipations’ first group exhibition in its renovated building, gathers a group of young French and international artists. The exhibition reacts to the simplification of current socio- political debates, the reinforcement of cultural, social, and political categorizations, and the fear of difference. It proposes to look for more subtle and less dichotomous methods to address differences, not in terms of separation, but as intimately linked categories, as scholar Denise Ferreira da Silva would formulate – or in relation, as poet and philosopher Édouard Glissant would articulate.

Exclusively composed of new commissions (films, installations, performances and sculptures), which for the most have been produced on site in the Fondation’s workshop, Le centre ne peut tenir is not a thematic exhibition in the typical sense of the term. Indeed, though certain themes such as borders and migration (of humans, data, heritage and signs) are interwoven in this exhibition, the event also gathers methods, questions and considerations at times linked only by their common social, political and human awareness. These dynamics under study are embodied by the spatial configurations of the exhibition tower’s mobile platforms conceived by Rem Koolhaas/OMA that will evolve periodically throughout the event.