Presence Panchounette

Between 1969 and 1990, the Présence Panchounette collective banzaï-attacked the art world with an onslaught of press releases, flyers, irreverent and butthead deeds. Primarily active in Bordeaux, the group spread its actions on to the international art scene, whose aesthetic hypocrisies and ideological taboos it pinned down with jovial ferocity. The bravado of the Bordeaux-based collective would also anticipate movements born in the Eighties, like Appropriation and Neoconceptual art. Concerned with not smothering its verve in the pernicious Pandora trunk of compromise and mendacity, Présence Panchounette turned its back on honours and remained stone deaf to the attracting songs of institutional sirens, until it announced its disbanding in 1990.