Roselyne Bachelot-Narquin, Minister of Culture, in agreement with Johanna Rolland, Mayor of Nantes, Christelle Morançais, President of the Regional Council of the Pays de la Loire, Philippe Grosvalet, President of the Departmental Council of Loire Atlantique and Michel Messina, President of the association, approves the appointment of Eli Commins to the management of the Unique Place (LU), National Scene of Nantes, on unanimous proposal of the jury meeting on January 22, 2021.
Since 2019, Eli Commins has been director of Atelier B/Matrice. He was previously Deputy Director of La Panacée, a contemporary culture centre in Montpellier, and then in charge of coordinating digital policies at the Ministry of Culture. He is also a creator of digital and documentary devices.
True to the pioneering spirit of the Unique Place, Eli Commins wants to make it a living space, in permanent movement, to make live show and visual arts dialogue, to cross popular and «learned» artistic and cultural practices and uses, while questioning them through times of debate designed to address the greatest number.
The Unique Place will be the place of experimentations, whether they are new aesthetic forms or modalities of relations with the populations and territories that Eli Commins wants interactive and federating. The opening of the Libre Usine, part of the life of his neighbourhood, will make this approach a reality.
Thus, the Unique Place will be at the origin of an innovative creative sector that, by multiplying collaborations, will irrigate the networks of creation and dissemination at the national, European and international levels, facilitating the circulation of works and unpublished practices. Eli Commins' project will also strengthen the LU’s contribution to cooperation and artistic dynamics at the metropolitan, departmental and regional levels.
With the team of the Unique Place, the new director will have the responsibility to accompany the resumption of activities as soon as the sanitary conditions allow it so that the cultural life regain its full vigour.
Eli Commins succeeds Patrick Gyger, who led the LU between 2011 and 2020 and whose Minister welcomes the commitment to maintain the spirit of this atypical artistic and cultural place, in its approach to creation as well as in its relationship to people.