These chairs rely only on their number and are no longer intended for use, no longer ready to be occupied. Laid out as they are, one would not sit in these chairs. It is in the logic of their disposition to remain empty, assembled in such ways as to let their assembly stand for itself. These are meeting chairs held up in a meeting of chairs… a meeting which is itself suspended. There are moments critical to humanity when empty conference chairs convene together to hang themselves.

Each convention takes its name from the city of assembly: the Congress of Aix-en-Provence, the Congress of Berlin, the Congress of Marseilles, the Congress of Shanghai… These names provide a geographic reference but also evoke History.
And often the chairs used at each of these conventions carry their own history. They are not new (or at least their model is not new), they have had a first life and have since aged. They have been of service at numerous human meetings, enabled debates and encounters, aided in the making of decisions or the advancing of knowledge… and now? They are here, convened in a sitting of their own, constituting senates of former seats hanging on to their memories…

All is suspended.