Encompassing 18th Street Arts Center's Visiting Artist Residency Program, its Artist Labs process-based exhibition series, and in partnership with Highways Performance Space, Paris-based artists Iván Argote and Pauline Bastard tap into multiple platforms for public engagement from January through March 2013. Guest-curated by Isabelle Le Normand, Argote and Bastard are frequent collaborators that create 'scenarios' as the premise for their art-making. Often times relying on public or community participation, Argote and Bastard favor the unexpected outcomes that arise from collective action. A group of videos, objects and functional installations will occupy the main gallery, and new works will be developed on-site throughout the course of their residency.

As a culminating event, Argote and Bastard present BORN TO CURATE, a live curatorial battle that pits four teams of Los Angeles-based curators head to head in a fast-paced game of wit and knowledge. Structured like ... a game show, teams have two minutes to conceptualize a curatorial project or exhibition in response to a theme picked at random. Inverting the largely private curatorial process into a public event, ideas behind the construction of meaning are infused with open response and humor. Winners are determined by an applause meter and receive the coveted Born to Curate trophy.

Iván Argote & Pauline Bastard and BORN TO CURATE are part of Ceci n'est pas..., a project initiated by the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States in association with the Institut Français, with the support of the Alliance Française of Los Angeles, the French Ministry of Culture and Communication and the participation of many local institutions over the course of five months.

Iván Argote?

Iván Argote was born in Bogota in 1983. He lives and works between Paris and New York, and graduated from the Beaux-Arts in Paris in 2009. Recent exhibitions include: 30th São Paulo Biennial, 'Sin heroísmos, por favor' (solo), CA2M, Madrid (2012); Art Brussels (solo), Perrotin booth (2012); Girarse, Joan Miró Fundation, Barcelona; The Dialectic City, Laboratorio de Artes Binarios, Puerto Rico (2011); Caliente, Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, Paris, 2011 (solo show); A brake to dance, Galerie Valenzuela & Klenner, Bogota, Colombia, 2009; Zapping Unit, MAC/VAL Museum of Contemporary Art of Val-de-Marne, Vitry-sur-Seine, France, 2009. He's preparing upcoming exhibitions, including: 30th Sao Paulo Biennale (Sep 2012); La Estrategia, Palais de Tokyo (Dec 2012). Iván Argote's practice deals with social, political and art historical ?elds through mediums as varied as video, photography, sculpture and painting. Being simultaneously the director and main actor in his work, Iván interrogates with humour the views and perspectives imposed by our social positions, the status of an artwork and the notion of interactivity, which he addresses through a ?ctionalisation of the everyday.

Pauline Bastard?

Pauline Bastard was born in 1982 and lives and works between Paris and New York. She graduated in 2009 from the Beaux-Arts in Paris and from the University of La Sorbonne, Paris in 2010, she then spent a one year research residency in New York University. Recent exhibitions include: 30th São Paulo Biennial, Unheimliche Reisen at Dienstgebaude, Zurich; Coup Double at FRAC Aquitaine, Bordeaux; Voyage voyage at Maison de l'Amérique Latine; Green-white-red at Collezione Maramotti, Regio Emilia, Italia; Jours Heureux at 80WSE, New York; XOVUXY at Eva Hober gallery, Paris (solo show); Rehab, Espace Electra, Paris. She is now in residency in Domaine departemental de Chamarande where she is preparing for upcoming exhibitions, including the 30th Sao Paulo biennal. She invites us into a world where ?ction and reality are entangled, at the heart of which misleading ?ctions reign. Through mediums such as video and sculpture, she plays with and de?es narrative processes through the phenomenon of detachment, re-appropriation and semantic displacement. Popular objects and everyday materials are omnipresent in her practice, creating a complicit game with the spectator where the veracity of their ?ctional and dramatic potential is questioned. The Sauna, Mains d'Oeuvres, 2010, Paris.

Curator, Isabelle Le Normand?

Isabelle Le Normand is curator and Director of Visual Arts at Mains d'?uvres, a nonpro?t, multidisciplinary gallery and performance space in the heart of the Flea Market of Paris showing emerging, mid-career and established artists. She has recently organized the exhibitions Better Being a Virus Than Catching a Cold, (Budapest, FKSE 2011, Mains d'?uvres, 2008), An Auction, (Mains d'?uvres, 2011), Who do you admire ? (La Box, Bourges, 2011), La Famille Farrell (Maison Populaire, Montreuil ; Mains d'?uvres, Saint-Ouen, 2010), Diagonal Argument (Bétonsalon, 2008). Since September 2011, she runs the seminar Los Angeles -from Margins to Center at ESAAA, Annecy. She is currently in residency at Cité Des Arts in Paris to curate the project I Am Here For You, to establish links between artists from abroad and the Parisian art scene.