ASFI and Babel's main contemporary art goal since 2014: bring curators' independance back at the center of the game.

Because they constantly create new concepts in which they involve artists, collectors, and journalists, contemporary art curators and critics have been the main creative drivers of contemporary art since the 1970s. But there are obviously other parameters that interfere. These economic, geopolitical and ideological parameters are today all the more influencial as they are essentially globalized. The almost total freedom enjoyed by the great curators in the 70s, 80s and even 90s has fully disappeared with on one hand the rise of populists and new dictatorial regimes, and on the other hand with the creation of both global and fragmented communities usually built around means of communication aimed at targeting them as consumer groups. The ASFI Foundation, a fictional but nevertheless operational art work created by Arnaud Cohen in the 2010s, was intended to highlight these impediment mechanisms and their various origins (fiscal, entrepreneurial, technological and societal, …) through events or conferences (Centre Pompidou, Tate St Ives, etc), but also and above all through moments of conviviality and trust built on the occasion of performed symposiums (at the invitation of the biennials of Venice, Dakar, Bienalsur, Something Else Cairo, …). One of the missions of the Babel Mallorca project, hampered for a time by the corona virus, is to be the "armed wing" of ASFI for the 2020ies and beyond. Its objective is not only to build a network of friendship and mutual support for curators who are still in a position to resist (most of them can no longer do so in an open manner), but also to offer a space dedicated to help the new generations through for awareness-raising and transmission.