Designed as a traveling residence in the northern Basque Country, co-op is a platform for artistic experimentation, inviting visual artists to explore the region's intangible heritage. Far from being a static archive, this heritage, woven from popular beliefs, both current and long forgotten, becomes living material for creation. The artists, selected for their ability to decipher symbolic narratives, trace a sensitive cartography, revealing the magical dimension of traditions. co-op favors a contemplative temporality, where emptiness, both threat and promise, is transformed into a space for questioning collective memory, the living, and the intangible.
The COOP team consists of:
1 artistic director. 1 volunteer communications, outreach, and sponsorship manager. 1 office of volunteers who actively participate in our activities. 1,025 followers on Facebook. 66 members who have paid their dues.
Founded in 2013 by Julie Laymond, Aurore Garcia, and Perrine Landrieu, co-op is an outdoor contemporary art residency anchored throughout the Basque Country. This nomadic project supports emerging and established artists, inviting local and international artists to produce new works while immersed in non-art spaces of their choosing. Far from conventional settings, co-op champions experimental art in action, forging links with local residents and deconstructing fixed narratives about the region.
Each residency begins with an immersion in Basque beliefs, traditions, and histories, where artists, like smugglers, explore intangible heritage to offer a critical reinterpretation. This dialogue with the intangible is driven by a curiosity for the magical dimension.
co-op traces a shifting constellation, where each work, anchored in a place, reactivates collective memory and renews representations of the territory. This residency favors a slow temporality, allowing artists to open up narratives through innovative forms and processes. Now materialized at the Joangi house (“the passage” in Basque), co-op continues to explore the sublime void of the intangible, revealing the unsuspected possibilities of a territory in perpetual reinvention.
Galac
(The Great Local Agenda for Contemporary Art). Since 2014, COOP has been working with contemporary art stakeholders in Labourd (Art & Project - Hasparren -, La Maison, Nekatoenea - Hendaye -, Le Second Jeudi - Bayonne -) to publish a joint agenda of the various cultural activities we offer. This calendar is available to the general public, free of charge, in high-traffic areas in towns along the Basque coast and in cultural venues. The aim of this calendar is to pool information in order to encourage the public to consult a comprehensive list of contemporary art events in our region.
Our partners
École supérieure d’art Pays Basque
Musée Basque et de l’Histoire de Bayonne
Musée Unterlinden
Le Second Jeudi
Nekatoenea
La Maison
PanOramas
COOP est membre du réseau Galac, Astre et de la FRAAP.
Institutional Support
DRAC Nouvelle-Aquitaine
Eurorégion Nouvelle-Aquitaine / Euskadi / Navarre
Région Nouvelle-Aquitaine
Conseil départemental des Pyrénées-Atlantiques
Institut Culturel Basque
Office Public de la Langue Basque
