It seemed “right” to him, in line with his artistic project and what prompts and probes it: “If I am engaged [in art], what is the reason? What are the aims? It is useful only if it mends something in my intimate relationship with the world. Otherwise, why choose to be an artist?”
Having just left school, the artist thus placed the very question of the work of art at the heart of the same and, through its mediation, took to heart and tackled the questions that already haunted him: belonging, difference, social status, the explosion of the concept of the diaspora, the relationship with the other and with the world, the function of art, the role of the artist, and so on.
This mediation potentially contains a fully open approach to all these questions. Finally, he no longer felt cramped in the field of art. Strengthened by a recent reading of Cioran, his plan “to create artwork” thus helped largely to justify the intercession of the precept Bricoler l’incurable. From the writings of the contemporary philosophical and literary icon of the “pessimistic worldview”, he brought the concept of “mending the incurable” back to the surface.( Cioran, Syllogismes de l’amertume, Gallimard, Folio Essais, Paris, 1987, p. 27. ) The formula struck El baz immediately, and he decided to appropriate it in his own way.
For his first slim volume (now lost, Entitled Bricoler l’incurable, 1991.) he had already gathered together various photographs of the members of his family. Philippe Robert, ( Artist and teacher at the time in the École des Beaux-Arts in Dunkirk.) with whom he embarked on this project, asked him to think of a name for the book. He dived back into his notes and Bricoler l’incurable became the title. Planning further editions, he then founded a small publishing house and named it Trabendo (Smuggling). Gestation was already under way. One work followed another. Works for the diploma. The first installations. They soon all linked up and began to resound with this phrase. It was not yet a general title, being established as such only after some further artistic experiments with the installation created for his first major participation in a group show (Le Milieu du monde).
El baz added Détails to Bricoler l’incurable in the sense of parts of a whole and thus ensured the possibility of also indicating, if necessary, the characteristic specificity of the installation in question, as exemplified by later works like: Bricoler l’incurable. Détails, Atterrissage forcé (Forced Landing); Bricoler l’incurable. Détails, Hard day’s night; Bricoler l’incurable. Détails, Love Supreme; and Bricoler l’incurable. Détails (Valeurs véhiculaires); In all the wrong places.
Displaying it as such (in large letters cut out and stuck on the wall) before definitive use as the title of all his works marked a crucial decision, namely to present an element which, though fragmentary, contains its totality and is “contained by” it at the same time. This wording makes it possible to display connections with a frame of mind within the field of Cioran’s ideas but is also related (and not by chance) with the opening credits of a film
Nadine Descendre
( From the monographic book Mohamed El baz published by Skira )
