AGORA(-OFF)-ON – Cultural space and festival for confined arts | #Nola2020

In the framework of their “Creaconnections and the call for proposals/creation/distribution NoLA (No Lockdown Art)” program, the European Pepinieres of Creation are happy to support the cultural space project « AGORA-OFF », imagined and designed by the artists Antoine Méthivier, Pierre-Marie PEM Braye-Weppe and Arnaud NANO Méthivier. This project will ensure cultural continuity during the lockdown period imposed by Covid-19 despite the cultural institutions’ temporary closing down in France and abroad.

This dematerialized cultural space aims to be an infinite place which explores and experiences collective processes to inhabit the world and build in common. An open place that implies spaces of freedom and seeks alternatives, a place, which is difficult to define because its main point is a doorway to the unexpected in order to build endlessly the possibilities to come. Finally like an Agora, it is a place of international exchange which is located in all the cities of the world. It is an experience that may seem precarious but above all concrete, joyful and inclusive, a multi-disciplinary space where all the universes get mixed up and where everything is possible.

AGORA-OFF is :

• Confined arts festival: the 1st Art Festival in France to be interested in creations which are created during the lockdown period. Every day from 7 p.m., this unique event takes place in the new cultural space “Agora-Off”. Its goal is to continue cultivating, enriching, educating, transmitting and questioning the new concept / idea of “Lockdown Art”.
• The Campus: artistic thread of selected students or speakers in art schools who propose their creations in order to provide cultural continuity for the audience during times when the site designers decree that the sharing and dissemination of art is in danger.
• The Undiscovered: is a space for spontaneous artistic expression. It is updated several times a day and contains artistic proposals shared by their creators. If you consider your artistic work to be part of the Lockdown Arts family, you can submit your content. Some works will be featured every day from 7 p.m.., in “the Campus” for students and/or in the Confined arts festival.
• The Villa Creation: is a special area for creators in lockdown where they can continue their artistic work in progress. Villa Creation can welcome several artists and several projects. It is accessible to the artist 24/7. It’s a kind of art residency.
• The Gallery: is a temporary themed exhibition space

From March 16 until May 10, 2020, AGORA-OFF hosted the first edition of the Festival des Arts Confinés, the 1st festival dedicated to original confined creations, as well as a Campus for students and speakers in art schools, and other events. More than 300 unpublished works created in confinement, from Japan to the United States, from Tunisia to England which are still available online today.

Monday May 11 at 00:00, AGORA-OFF open AGORA-ON, a place dedicated to all creators permanently or temporarily confined (in remand centers, prisons, internment, immigration or refugee camps, in administrative detention center in medium or long-stay hospitals, psychiatric hospitals, nursing homes) and Isolated creators, confined, cut off from the world, etc.