Outings, a project that sets art free

Outings is an initiative created by French artist, filmmaker and visual artist Julien de Casabianca. An idea as simple as it is brilliant, a global participatory project aiming to take art out of museums, thanks to new technologies.



What would happen if we "set free" the artworks we go to see in our museums? If we could look at them outside their frame - both of the painting and of the actual museum? How do we perceive art?





In his book “L'immagine è un oggetto. Visual Marketing con Storytelling” Paolo Schianchi writes that “our perception (of the work of art) is changed by a design action, by the construction of a new image created through representation, space and time”.





Which is exactly what Julien de Casabianca - French artist, filmmaker and visual artist - is doing with his initiative called “Outings”, involving museums, people and artworks from all over the world. He asks anyone who feels like it to visit the city museums and take photos of the portraits on show, cutting out and printing only the actual face of the person portrayed and pasting the print on walls in the city. This result is then photographed again to put the work into a context, thereby turning it into a new image “because it changes its communication through the eyes of whoever views it”.





An idea that "frees" the portraits from the museums and places them on our city streets, giving these artworks a new, different perception, which we too can experience. The characters pasted up on the walls of the various cities, as you can see in the dedicated website, don't look at all unhappy to be out and about on the street. A great combination of "Art with a capital A" and Street Art, benefiting the urban communities and in line with our culture of sharing.

Christiane Bürklein

Project: Outings, http://www.outings-project.org/
On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/outingsproject?_rdr
Concept: Julien de Casabianca
Global initiative
Images courtesy of Outings