Re-Edit, Re-Enact, Remediate: The Exhibition as Time-Based Artwork (Philippe Parreno)

As a postmodern and interactive "dramaturgy", which denies any prefixed visitor’s route in favour of many different ways of making an immersive experience according to the visitors’ choices and movements in space, Philippe Parreno’s exhibitions are like machines à penser and work of art in themselves. This article analyzes Parreno's making of exhibition as a time-based medium, where visitors experience an interaction of diverse, proliferating images and narratives that are only partially dependent on the artist’s will. Automatic reactions and changes are produced both by chance and by visitors, who spend time in the exhibition moving around and producing their personal editing which affects the overall visual imagery. The exhibition thus becomes a temporal loop where multifold times and anachronic temporalities coexist and overlap.