Original text in French
Hi!!
I'm going to be in the shop for a few days. Not sure what I'm going to do there to be honest. I change my mind too often to get my mind set. At first I wanted to build a beach there and invoke Pamela Anderson. I also wanted to drink a 2L bottle of Coke Zero through a straw. It's a long time dream and this is a great opportunity to do it. I wanted to draw and fill the walls with faces.
I'm not sure what will stick with me from all these ideas. Anyway, knowing me, I'm going to dance and sing a lot; bring too many clothes and have fun with it; put makeup on while watching Katya and Trixie on youtube (I'll put the link at the bottom, they're iconic); lay on the floor while listening to really good music (there's a spotify playlist link that I'll add to as I go along, watch out it's going to be very eclectic).
Also, if I'm not there when you want to watch me, I made a best of video links of dance pieces that I binge watch weekly too late at night. Go watch them, they're so good!
If you have any questions and/or music recommendations, you can DM me on insta @weilantoine
Kiss kiss,
Tony
Original text in French
Here are the few projects I hope to accomplish during my residency at SABL.
First, I plan to shoot a scene from an experimental short film that is intended to be a filmic adaptation of composer John Cage's 4"33.
Secondly, I hoped to be able to reproduce as much as possible the conditions of isolation of a police custody and to subject myself to them again for ten hours. For the first five hours or so, I will have no distractions and will have to be satisfied with water to sustain myself. The second part, which will begin when I am delivered a meager meal, a book and a notebook, is intended to study the impact of the arrival of these objects on my body and mind.
For the time I have left, I plan to write, read, listen to music, doze, and embrace the ideas that would come to me.
Original text : French/English
Comme une sensation de nausée. Calendriers cousus ou brûlés. Odeurs d’essence reparties sans discretion. Une masse d’écailles sous la gorge. L’italienne et son robot. Un rescapé et son double. Figurines pour une fin. Entre deux émissions, entre deux épîtres. Prière de déranger.
Get ur own abacus or ditch. In parched-for-thirst union (with locations scrambled thicker than breakfast eggs) 2 little creatures come into hiding. How can they cram, cuddle or conjure a shadow for themselves? Themselves, ourselves, yourself.
Stay tuned among the stars – send instructions to +41(0)779170882.
Original text in French
Art is shared in the same way that a story is shared, whether in the way it is conceived or in the way it is ultimately finished.
During this weekend we will combine the two by offering an interpretation of Mesper's quest set in the universe of Teuchland. Through our art, we express the brotherhood of our duo and act in symbiosis to best express the story.
We hope the journey will speak to you and touch you.
Klein:Vision, ep
1:OhcysPrologue
Virtual experience of the Charley Klein’s darkroom¥
Showtime all the Sunday. Are. You. Awake ?
Or blind ?
Be kind
Be klein.
Original text in French
Pupil of by the miracle unknown thing finally - to be - in a presence
Construction of which perhaps I far precisely draws maniac of our own servitude. The verse stops at the edge of the abyss of when sweat seems not there that to write without sense then to die without blood?
Looks and faces of the stared at because only the look remains
Broken glass thorax locked up palpitation and waiting what mask then? None.
Let us go and enter the place.
Some traces: XXXIV
This place of in-between, purgatory, between earth and sky, between fingers, where elsewhere is only a here, a now, a there, where there is the act, where I open the material, that is, the body, space, time, text. There is the stage, where we come together, spectators and stage body. You are there, and I am there. But we won't see each other. Finally, you will see me, playing with these matters; playing with the there, with the trace; by the movement, by the figures, to configure and disfigure the space-time. Everything is matter, everything is physical, even the imaginary, especially the imaginary.
And you will give reality to the work, to the fiction, through the resonant, vibrant device. "I, I" only pose it. Possession, exploration, possession exploration, possessionexploration, poessexplotion, expopoplosion.
Concretely it will be about dance and poetry. The two are confused much. In this sense, always in improvisation, I will be in a process of research on the physical and mental movement, on the physiognomy of words, sounds, on the scenic and performative construction. During the time of occupation of the room, I will divide my research into two main parts. First, I will propose a scene that I will keep for the entrance exam of a performing arts school. I will rehearse it several times, until I feel I have a presentable scenic object. Once I've got it right, I'll launch into a long performance in which I'll listen to what the body and the walls tell me. Maybe some guests will join me in this place then charged with what will be there, and we will improvise together in reaction to what we feel.
Original text in French
Dandruff / impatronize themselves, dictate the sentence, seize themselves in order to split themselves to the exhausted
Jails / are erected, are confused in artifices, are objectified by the space that one besieges of troubles
- / the endings vacillate, are irritated by their poetry, are insurgent against the perpetual, against the self, and, will die in some triumph
/chancelling neo-literacy
For my second residency at SABL, it will be appropriate to continue the reflections, already started during my first residency, around the cinematographic thing, the isolation and the time.
The performance will take place over 5 days.
It will involve watching extremely long films in their entirety every day.
The duration of these films varies between 7h30 and 14h approximately. The list of films is as follows:
- Le Tango de Satan, Béla Tarr, 1994, 7h30
- A l'ouest des rails, Wang Bing, 2003, 9h16
- Shoah, Claude Lanzmann, 1985, 10h13
- Out 1, Noli Me Tangere, Jacques Rivette, 1971, 20h30
- La flor, Mariano Llinás, 2018, 13h53
If the aforementioned themes necessarily enjoin the highlighting of our problematic relationship to the screens, our capacity of attention which is waning and the over-information, there does not lie the first intention of this performance. Indeed, my performances have for purpose to be perfectly anti-spectacular, to register in the anti-"spectaclist" filiation. To subject oneself to (observe) my performances is a waste of time insofar as they turn out to be completely unproductive. Unproductive because they tear themselves away from the spectacular time, they only serve to search for boredom and meaning through it. In breaths of a Weltanschauung which is objective, these performances are distilled. However, they will become insidiously in breaths of insanity: fatally anhelize in front of the incongruence between what strives to the disalienation and its inexorable production of the spectacular.
I've enacted a multitude of strict rules. No talking on the phone, no discussion other than about the details of the film, no interrupting the performance, one break per 3 hours of film (rather, take breaks in the film itself);
It will be allowed to sleep, to bring one's own food and to eat it (as long as it does not cause too much discomfort to the other spectators), to stand up to stretch one's legs, to smoke.
Some spectators may accompany me during the performance, but they will have the possibility to interrupt the experience at any time, or possibly to leave for a few hours and come back later.
I reserve the right, as guarantor of the state of the SABL, to evict people who do not comply with the rules set forth and communicated before each session.
Original text in French
Part 1.2 - Proposal of a non-stop day in the open air, and 100% costumes, from 12h to 00h.
Picnic, spinning salad in helicopter and frisbee
Intense tanning, shorts t-shirt sunglasses sun cream and reading texts, moreover I was told that under the parasol
sunscreen is necessary
then the infernal schreadder, the one that allows us to burn the old stuff.
We play roles, alter-egos then we will create one more and we will film each other and at the same time, in an infernal whirlwind of filming.
A new game is a disguised but necessary sting, so we'll have a laughing contest for 1 hour non-stop.
We'll delve into the future and past by drawing light cards with candles and all the mess
Infernal costumes, bobo rock concert with microphone, wails, maracas, piano/keyboard and a note.
Once, an off-time dance party for two and a beautiful masquerade, then
"C'est la fin des haricots" as they say.
demidiàminuit, video, 4min, Montserrat Mayor & Agathe de limoges, 2021
A trial in absentia – is a criminal proceeding in a court of law which takes place without the presence of the accused.
read : e-mail conversation
A body in a chamber, some sounds break the silence. Bumps and thuds mark the time. A time out of date, a time without reference. A prisoner, but not one of the space. It wants to escape, yet the question is not where, but when.
in absentia began first of all as a critical look at SABL's exhibition platform, referring to our interaction with it, not only as artists in residence but also as spectators.
A mailing list hosting a critical brainstorming on the nature of the space constituted our preliminary approach to the work intended for it. In an extension of SABL, what came into being was a space of cohabitation and care, namely an affective network.
The result has been the effort to escape from the ordinary bonds between subject and space, imagining a body and its temporality beyond the material presence. What does a live transmission mean for the creation and reception of images? How can a space like SABL question all those mutual forces involved in our post-presence time?
We decided to deal with those questions, presenting the space itself as if we had been a customary user, namely through the cameras that constitute the very site and exhibitory space. A 3D surrogate of SABL has been prepared from the camera’s viewpoint, a specular image that became the interface to address a choral tale. To a situation that tacitly implies a presence subject to the voyeuristic gaze of the cameras, we decided to respond with an absence. The artists are not there, rather a placeholder acts in their place.
A projection of a 3D reconstruction of SABL's space rests on a corner of the room itself as if to cover it with a texture, or to reveal its underlying virtuality, like a scanning gaze that reduces spaces and materials to the hyper-image of their model. A rectangular hole shows the naked mesh. Sounds fill the room evoking the image of a body intent on training. Rhythms hint at a code; subtitles act as an intelligible interface to the thought of the figure, referring to the flat gaze of the camera that constitutes SABL itself. What originated is a game of layered surfaces: the bi-dimensional surface of our screens projecting the framings of SABL’s cameras, the materiality of SABL’s room and once again the flat veil of the 3D image projected onto the walls.
Original text in French
First, I have to build the conditions for the imaginary space to exist.
Then, at an unexpected moment, I come into the space for few hours.
For a while, I am in the space and I explore.
An empty room without windows, between four concrete walls,
spied on by surveillance cameras, without blind spots.
It's dark, I can be seen,
I can't see anything.
The infrared vision of the cameras.
I hear.
I explore a sound space activated by the deplacement of my body.
Traces left on the ground as I pass.
The traces are witnesses of the passing of time.
The times are superimposed, the traces allow the sound to stay.
This imaginary space is a park.
I accompany you between the tree trunks, along the streams,
when it rains and when it blows.
A heavenly synthetic voice is our guide.
At an unexpected moment, I come a few hours in space.
The performance activates the space.
During the rest of the residency, I am not in the space, but the space remains activated by the traces.
Original text in French
Dio is first of all a text.
It proposes a rewriting of the myth of Dionysus, hacked from the data compiled by Euripides in the Bacchae.
We dream of a cyborg insurrection, enabled by the advent of Dio's transforming energy, newly arrived on Earth to bug reality, glitched the molotov and datamoshed the sun - until the general fire.
Dio serves as a support for a reading-performance whose contours and forms are constantly changing. Sometimes, Dio is embodied on stage, sometimes, Dio is just a VR simulation that bodies experience. Usually, it all ends in a bug overdose, or a love riot.
Under the video surveillance of the SABL cameras, anthropie will record a video reading of the text.
Duration of the reading: 50 minutes
Saturday June 12: 7pm
Sunday June 13th : 3pm
Not suitable for photosensitive people.
Dio, Anthropie, Full text (French)
"Display" is not a performance, it is a realistic impression at the borders of abstraction, reality and surrealism.
The protagonists experience life, hunger and breathing, while watching and being watched. Their experience of the ordinary temporarily becomes a documentary.
Just the way it does when we go to buy milk. But fear not, because in the end, what remains are traces of the soup, as DNA is neither stolen nor gifted.
malmal.club
OCTOBER 1 - Nest Building 10:00
OCTOBER 13 - Incubation 11:00
OCTOBER 19 - Robots Live (With Jo Vargas) 16:00
OCTOBER 28 - Nest Abandonment 12:00
timezone CET
Through the month of October, Nacoca Ko will create a liminal nest, spawning a space where multiple lines of realities converge: the physical space-time room, with its contained objects and humans, robots and sensors; the digital plane of video art interfacing between the virtual and the real; dreams and memories- (past and future space-times manifesting); the surreal adaptations of machine-learning programs; the distorted perspective of the livecams; and you, in your own complex reality.
_
The immortal Phoenix has its own nest of fire and ash, circling upon itself. But it gets lonely and wants to love something other than itself.
Dividing into two, they find an old red vase in someone’s backyard, a human nest, and she lays her eggs there. A nest within a nest.
She sits alone in the dark for hours waiting. Her phone glows as she scrolls. If predators come near, she beats her wings against the echoing tin vase, amplifying the protective sounds of her love.
Sometimes he is the guardian and she flies. They take turns hunting insects and larvae, a relay race of protection and nourishment. Survival is precarious and nearly impossible but full of hope and surrender, disruption, redemption.
The Nest is cosmogonic, where a world can be built from nothing, where thought, identity, and dreams are incubated. It begins in a place before time, before birth, and it is woven from creatures and objects already in existence. It hatches agency, hazard, will, chaos. It manifests compassion, rhythm, and evolution. Generous gifts toward the unknown.
You are looking at me in my 4 blank walls, but I can only see your 4 black eyes. There are no real blank walls, only environments for nesting. You survey me but you cannot see what I really am. You have recognised my face, saved my preferences, updated my password. But I have hacked your cameras with interpreted and distorted narratives. You can only see a single frame of me- if you are lucky, maybe a sequence. Maybe you have 4 reference points, but it’s not enough. My personal data is an infinite universe.
_
The work was informed by entangling with birds that chose to nest in my home, as well as a livecam of buzzards high in the mountains, creating a nest from sticks and plastic bags, feeding city pigeons to their young.
Items are brought from my studio and outside the Sabl space to create a nest for artistic research. Videos accumulated from my observations and re(de)construction of the world meet new AI-formed birdlike creatures. The original birds in the dataset are from Haeckel’s drawings who positioned them in unnatural ways, reinterpreting their beauty and potential.
With Alan Ixba, GANs morph the birds and try to clone their calls. With Jo Vargas, autonomous robotic nest eggs hatch a world-song in a tempo and sonority of their own.
in collaboration with : Alan Ixba Jo Vargas playform.io Antoine Félix Bürcher
Original text in French
In SABL, I will immerse myself in a virtual reality - a digital replica of the place in which I will evolve, perform actions. I will interact with the double reality; virtual and material, the spectator will be connected to it by the Stream.
In these spaces, I will come to drink coffee before going to work, to make myself food and break everything, to vacuum the waves, to look at the forest through the TV while eating chips, to lie down to see the starry sky, then to stop everything.
Distorted Orchestra is a punk and dissonant sounding project - recordings of ambient sounds, distorted, saturated, and rhythmically aligned to make shattering industrial techno.
It is the recipe for Distorted Orchestra's sets and productions - a dissonant orchestra that invites the audience to explore a place.
On the 23th of January, there will be a Dj-set by Distorted Orchestra, a mix of original and non-original compositions.
The live mixed visuals of Felix will accompany the Dj set. This Swiss artist makes vi-jing sets by distorting video streams through a mixture of obsolete and more recent audiovisual technologies. For each of his sets, he uses different collections of data.
Here, he proposes a dataset of surveillance cameras: passages, forests, and distorted and colored mountains aligned to the shattering rhythms of Distorted Orchestra.
Conceived as a necessary search for bodily introspection into Eva Maspoli's own artistic process, TRAINING TO ENTER at sabl explores four aspects of live performance: the intimate relationship of the artist to the bodily act, the relationship to the platform and the live audience, the relationship between the artist and the physical space of the sabl as a shell, and the temporality of a repetitive act. After a short acclimatization residency in the space on February 25, Eva Maspoli will perform in the afternoon of February 26, from 15.00 until open end. This piece explores the possibility of an intimate introspection whose goal is to reach a state of full consciousness in order to unlearn and de-construct in repetition, despite the constraints of the online off-space. Is it possible to do intimate introspection under the gaze of surveillance cameras?
The impossibility of co-presence with the public, imposed by the sabl, presents itself as an opportunity for the artist to reflect on the interaction between an absent public and the performance space. Those who wish to do so can send sounds, music and noises live and beforehand to feed a common playlist over which the artist has no control, a playlist that will scroll and constitute the sound environment of the action (you can find the link to this playlist in the documentation). But this sound will perhaps also be a distraction from the action itself for Eva Maspoli, a relationship to the outside and to the public that the body seeks to forget in its introspective research. The work questions the very device of the sabl in its performative and interactive potential, and the possibility of this stage of intimate introspection, close to trance, necessary to any work starting from the body as medium.
Interventions and schedules:
25.2.22: arriving
26.2.22: performance, 15:00 - open end
—> Link of the common playlist in the documentation tab.
___________________
The Act
It will last at least 6 hours. In a room, only with my body and the sound as a diversion in-between the space environment and the world ‘outside’.
A very intime scene, inside of myself, like walking on a mountain to feel my body, to forget my ego and be in the moment. But this time there is no mountain, no landscape, only this room and myself…
The Audience/ the platform
The audience as voyeurs, watching the performer in their own privacy, observing and reacting in their own space, invisible to my own eyes. However, one possible interaction: the audience can bring their thoughts or feelings in form of music or voice memos inside of this space and add it to a playlist running live. The performer has no control over it. Those messages from outside are in this case the outer environment brought inside of this room.
The room, my body/clothes and my thoughts/innerlife
A blank room, four walls, no windows, without personality - how can I become a raw material like this room? Is it possible for me, in a room with close and clear borders (walls) to concentrate on my body and let it act free? The room is a shell, my clothes are a shell, my body is a shell. A shell in a shell in a shell. How to forget those shells or integrate them fully in the being in each moment?
The time
The act is repeated over hours. The relevance of the space, the personality, the audience change. The body gets tired and the brain stops to think where it is or who is watching. I start to forget the surrounding - I will potentially enter a kind of trance. Maybe because of the sound from time to time I will remember where I am.
What will happen?
I'm obsessed with Reality show, finally a realistic-reality-show! The Collective, which resides at sabl, will take you on a week-long journey that you can watch in streaming around the clock. Three contestants will compete in various challenges, eventually facing the public vote during a big prime time evening.
The goal of the game? To prove one's diverse talents, authenticity and creativity in order to win the audience's heart. In other words, to be the best in all areas.
The contestants will have to give their best in their way of life, in making accessories and decorations that reflect their extraordinary personality, as well as in their daily life andin surviving in a confined environment. They will impress you with their creations, their creative magic, their public speaking skills, their best moves and their personal aesthetics.
Follow the contestants and their evolution throughout the week and join us on Friday night for a sensational evening hosted by our fierce commentators! During this fateful primetime, you will hold in your hands the fate of a candidate who will be eliminated. The next day, relive the best moments with the remaining candidates, who will report on the best and worst moments of this intense week.
The collective I’m obsessed with is composed of :
Antonia Marjeru, Camille Martin, Garance Deprez,
Laure Fannière, Raphaëlle Detheve, étudiantes Master Monstre ESAAA - Annecy ;
Charlotte Laurent, Noémie Gambino, Victor Delétraz, étudiant.es WORK.MASTER HEAD - Genève ;
Adrian Fernandez Garcia, Chloé Devanne Langlais, artistes - Genève.
Instagram : @i_m_obsessed_with
E-mail :
collectif.imobsessedwith@gmail.com
Original text in French
sabl as the last bastion of dreams against unbridled capitalism.
For more than two weeks, sabl will be transformed into an animation studio. While in the cinema everything is done to hide the production process so that it looks as if the footage falls from the sky, here the process is on display, with its sweat and its mistakes.
You will see how I animate objects by photographing them. I will breathe life into these childlike objects (toys, magazines, balloons) and turn them into real characters fighting against alienation. Because yes, toys have feelings and anger. Anger that they are disposable, that they are victims of fashion, that they are of poor quality. They demand revenge, cinematic revenge. And while I animate these toys, I will be a little your toy through the cameras of sabl?
Original text in French
Build
Stack
Stretch a gesture
Open
Cover
Arrange the wall
Destroy
Modulate
Fold
This residency is a collaboration with the curatioral association Laissez-passer which will broadcast simultaneously the images of this residency on screens in different cities in Europe.
Original text in French
The project at sabl Chaussures sablières will be the occasion to reflect a narrative in real time, manipulating the notion of time (tempstemps, tintin), taking the train to drag, swirling gently. They will use the space at sabl the mountain and this time two people, Elia and Marie (Fidanza and Lucas).
[...] et puis
pas d’coup de soleil dans un sous-sol
Pipo dans les bois
gencives étoilées
pas d’sablés à sabl non plus
pipi dans l’évier
la pluie, tant pis
mastiquer la peur de la paresse dans une tarte au poire comme ça
bougeotter comme si bientôt l’été
une semaine de sept
quatre chaussettes
on sera ici par là
quelques fois [...]
Collectif sous-titre is a collective with variable geometry which functions in the manner of a cabinet of curiosity. Inspired by elements of everyday life, it questions the relationship between space and body, body and body, body and objects, object and objects.
Elia Fidanza and Marie Lucas live in Geneva and are students at the HEAD - Geneva.
Original text in Italian
urban vacations.
A vacation is, literally, the condition of that which is empty. It stands for suspension, interruption, and can correspond to the temporary cessation of an activity, desired or forced, planned or unforeseen; it is a state of exception to normality, to the usual productive and determinative state; it is, after all, a monstrosity, since it is a mode of existence that differs from the ordinary. It is absence, which does not necessarily generate regret; on the contrary, it is also a juncture of availability of high maieutic potential, capable of generating opportunity and becoming. (Annalisa Metta, Il paesaggio è un mostro)Vacation is actually where absence becomes possibility. Within this vacus/vague lives my prediletta (beloved, favourite).
The prediletta manifests herself in everything that is not the point of the treated fact, A lot of things happen during her work. i find it interesting to observe everything that happens in her outline, in what she leaves behind, in what she chooses not to do, looking at all the gestures it takes to get to the point. She shows herself because all she can do is be there, like drinking water, at some point to drink water you have to introduce water into your body.
Many things are not definable, certainly we all hear them as voices of ghosts passing by. They, however, are most important here.
Let's go find the prediletta.
____
During the residency period, the secret place of sabl will be explored and an extremely lively unveiling will be introduced.
The residency will follow a methodology of mapping paesaggi avanzati (advanced landscapes)*. What characterizes these landscapes is the ambiguity - the vagueness - of being both domestic and wild, cared for and barded. The paesaggi avanzati* are not only natural or urban windows, but also symbols of knowledge/transformation and magic, experimental laboratories, wrecks and ruins.
* avanzato (advanced in Italian):
1 - diametrically opposed to.
2 - 1) "what remains", is superfluous or useless because it is obsolete or because we don't know what to do with it. 2) what is in the forefront and represents the progress of knowledge and skills, of abilities.
For 3 weeks between mid-September and the end of October, the 33km/h collective will present an installation that evolves as it wanders through the neighborhood.
The collective develops throughout the residency a reflection on the aesthetics of the trace by collecting objects found during their walks and by their assemblies in space.
Disenchanted, deprived of their functions, the pieces of architecture and found objects are brought back to their raw state.
The different points of view of the cameras show the fragments of interiors assembled - a cryptic space through a chaos of shapes and colors.
The traces on the objects themselves tell the stories of the intimate spaces inside our homes and their assemblages transcend us as a community by questioning our daily relationship to the materiality of what surrounds us.
We are here as bodies in a room dominated by straight walls and cameras’ eyes. We’ve come here to manipulate the space, to see how the room around us twists and moulds, transitioning into a digital organism of rhizomatic and fragmented relations: a distortion of vectors netting us within itself. The body is becoming a part of the walls – a part its mesh and a part its grain.
The Grain Of The Wall is a week-long performance project on experiences in the crossroads of tactile and virtual environments.
Original text in French
On 25 January at 1 PM (CET), Paul Fritz presents Twenty-First Century Folk, a live film lasting about 10 minutes under the surveillance cameras of sabl. This filmed performance honours the silent actors of the sabl space. Present every day, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for more than 2 years now, without ever having had a break. The objects that populate this small room deserve to be at the forefront of the last residency in this place. For the first time, they will be allowed to move around at will to stretch their legs for about ten minutes. A mysterious character seems to be behind this abnormal behaviour...
Twenty-First Century Folk questions the emergence of folk legends in the 21st century. The film establishes a link between the obscurantism of the Middle Ages, a context conducive to the circulation of myths, and the era of the Global Villagewhere urban legends, creepypastas, fake news and hoaxes flourish.
« Imagine a world of enslaved objects remorsefully scrutinizing you. You car, your yacht, your art collection observes you with a gloomy and utterly desperate expression. You may own us, they seem to say, but we are going to inform on you. And guess what kind of creature we are going to recognize in you! » (1)
Virtual exhibitions like sabl, which were born out of containment, may be compromised this winter by a new crisis, let's hope that power shortages won't affect live performance or perhaps it will be a case of ending on a high note, with a deflagration of the digital image with the film Twenty-First Century Folk and entering a new nomadic era.
(1) Hito Steyerl, « Duty Free Art : Art in the Age of Planetary Civil War », les presses du réel, 2021
In a white laboratory-like space, different creators are at work. The matter vibrates and in petal-shaped containers, bacteria swarm, discreetly, while humans sleep. The flowers have left the vase, the materials are transformed, the forms metamorphose. The vase itself has perhaps evaporated. One wonders who is resident here; the created occupies only the temporality of the ephemeral. What vibrated has decomposed and will maybe nourish the birth of the next flower.
By putting their respective practices in dialogue, Costanza Giorgi and Noémie Balazs conceive their residency at sabl as a symbiotic experimentation. In the laboratory, they sculpt as a duo and exhibit their own artifacts and creations. The space is then opened up to the materials themselves, which, as performative objects, change appearances under the eyes of the surveillance cameras. Bacteria proliferate in the liquid found in the petal-shaped containers. The agar agar evaporates to reveal a sculptural trace, itself colored by its microscopic inhabitants. Projections of traces and chemical reactions inhabit the walls; rusted metal frames decorate them. A gelatin cake changes its appearance slowly, to the rhythm of drying flowers. The objects inhabiting the space escape any container, any restriction, any control. Their evanescence resonates with the temporality of the live. They are of the kind of what is created, transformed, what is already far away and impossible to grasp. The matter runs continuously though and across bodies; in sympoiesis, we are invited to observe and listen to its precious discrete and quiet chemical reactions.
«Overnight, very
Whitely, discreetly
Very quietly
Our toes, our noses
Take hold on the loam
Acquire the air.
(…)
We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot’s in the door.»
Sylvia Plath, Mushrooms, 1960
«Sympoiesis is a simple word; it means “making-with”. Nothing makes itself; nothing is really autopoietic or self-organising.»
Donna Haraway, Staying with the trouble: Making Kin in the Chtulucene, Duke University Press, 2016, p.58
“For all we know, the crates could even be empty. It is a museum of the internet era, but a museum of the dark net, where movement is obscured and data-space is clouded.”
Hito Steyerl, Duty Free Art: Art in the Age of Planetary Civil War, Verso, 2017, p.83
The sabl moved its cameras into the space of the exhibition "Aux Abris" - an exhibition on Swiss civil protection shelters taking place in Lausanne (CH) - following a curatorial reflection rooted in the existence of a protection service dedicated to cultural heritage and to the preservation of works of art in case of crisis or disaster: “The protection of cultural property (La protection des biens culturels PBC)”.
In the shelter's original telecommunications room, the work of monitoring and preserving previously saved artworks seems to be taking place. The staff has gone on break: various artifacts have been left on the desks, including an inventory list of various works and their technical information. On one of the desks, a screen was left on. It shows a panopticon of surveillance cameras; four viewpoints film a room full of boxes and packaging in real time. Some of the boxes have been opened or partially opened, revealing various details of the pieces inside. The armored door to the storage room is not far away; the curious may try to peek in, or enter this place where the treasure lies.
In her manifesto essay Duty Free Art, artist and writer Hito Steyerl discusses extraterritorial places - from a legal point of view - in which works of art are preserved and not accessible to the public, such as Geneva Freeport.
The example of these companies brings to light various problems related to our relationship to works of art today: Is it art if the public cannot access it? Is an object really an artifact of culture if it remains in stasis, in immutability beyond the dynamic processes of life? What is being preserved when works of art are placed under cover - the culture of which they are a part or their economic capital?
In the case of a disaster situation where works of art have been sheltered, one wonders where the value of the objects lies: Is it their actual presence or a form of aura linked to their symbolic and economic value?
The intervention of the sabl in the exhibition "Aux Abris" addresses all these questions in a will to explore the tensions between securitization and privatization; tensions that appear when we understand culture as a living and active process.
Inventory of the artworks
Artists: Marine AEBISCHER, Yel K. BANTO, Antoine Félix BÜRCHER, Tim CASARI, Weiyu CHEN, Pauline CORDIER, Alan CROISSANT, Sebastián DÁVILA, Behzad DEHNO, Maël DUPRAZ NAYAK, Marc EICHER, Oriane EMERY, Laure FEDERICONI, Paul FRITZ, Sylvain GELEWSKI, Justine Stella KNUCHEL, Nacoca KO, Xenia Liv LANDOLF, Sebastian LENDENMANN, Eva Talesia MASPOLI, Ricardo MELI, Lucas
MORETTI, Elio MUELLER, Ophelie NAPOLI, Yan PAVLIK, Stéphane Nabil PETITMERMET, Nicolas PONCE, Donat PREKOROGJA, Louis REBETEZ, Simon SALAZAR, Lea SBLANDANO, Charlotte SCHAER, Jessie SCHAER, Virginie SISTEK, Levin STETTLER, Lyndon STÜCKLIN, Emilie TRIOLO, Kirill TSCHELUCHIN, Lou-Anna ULLOA DEL RIO, Elsa WAGNIÈRES, Pascal WEIDMANN, Balthazar ZIN
An experiment in a room beyond the windows, doors or walls. Spinning in circles, looking around, observing, moving into action until one sees it from a bird's eye view. Dust combines with other particles, collects in the movement and visions merge with memories.
As an industrial site, the Manegg area contains imprints, traces, and artifacts left by others who spent time there. I move through this history, leaving my own traces and inlaying different time frames. The memory and appearance of the place will be the material for my residency.
Using found objects, I bend the memory of the material and change the structures of the backdrops. Casting methods will be important as I reshape the given body, morph it. I’m taking action in the instances that would make the transition possible. The appearing portal when navigating far enough in a structure is key for the experimentation, passing through it and going into a moment of transition.
Base Scores:
The room must be activated to work.
When working and leaving the room is modified according to its use.
The room itself is considered a wild space.
Schedule:
First step.
Exploring the set up and surrounding.
Understanding the cameras and perspective.
Bringing material and finding the first objects.
Spend time with the objects.
Second step.
Manipulation of the space and the found material.
First experiment.
Playing around.
Third step.
Manipulation of the experiments, reflections on the previous production steps.
Full immersion in the room.
Producing, testing and assembling parts.
To come.
Over the course of a week, the sabl cameras show us moments in the studio.
Ophélie Napoli's sculptural practice focuses on the coexistence of organic or random behaviors within and around structural forms. Using post-minimalism as a starting point, the artist combines artificial materials with chaotic forms in a bid to overcome an anthropocentric relationship with matter.
Part of her preoccupation concerns our species protagonist state of mind in a world where we clearly act as transient parasites. Through destruction and repair, the artist embraces the wounds of our collective experience, defying any notion of progress.
Ophélie Napoli (6 September 1998, Zurich) is a MFA graduate from Edinburgh University. Her work has been displayed in several group and solo exhibitions internationally: Eclectique x ArtBeiTon (@ Griessmühle, November 2019, Berlin), Barnacle Dust and Amber Rocks (@ ECA Sculpture Court, March 2022, Edinburgh), Spare Rib - Paradise Lost (@ The Caves, Feb 2022 Edinburgh), My Guts on your Table (@ Keller in Zeughausstrasse 31, August 2023, Zürich).
The inhabiting bodies modulate space-time. Grids, silhouettes, movements like clusters of particular spaces and times; the images act as places apart, canvases that evolve.
As part of the exhibition TEMPS / ZEIT / TEMPO / TIME, the sabl explores the evolution of the exhibition space and its temporal nature, allowing viewers to watch the installation, progress and dismantling in real time. The surveillance cameras offer different perspectives on the Arsenalt, revealing activities and lulls, all in a continuous live stream. The exhibition is presented as a duration made up of gestures and social interactions; highlighting its processes reveals its complexity and the different ways of existing within it as agent, technician, spectator, work of art, object, animal, plant and insect.
The sabl seeks to expose what is usually hidden, revealing the construction process and making visible what is inaccessible. This approach is in keeping with its mission of bringing artists' work to light. For the duration of the exhibition, EDC has given artist Gunflamm a residency in a separate room that is inaccessible to the public. One of the sabl's cameras is placed in this space, allowing the moment of presentation and the moment of production to come together.
Gspürsch eus?
Mir sind da.
Immerno.
Eus gits sit langer langer Ziit.
Mir ghöred niemertem.
Du findsch eus i de Bergä.
Det bewegemer eus zwüsche Quellä, Flüss, Seä,
zwüsche Gipfel, Stei und Wälder,
zwüsche de Nacht- und Tagwese.
Jetzt gseht eus niemert meh.
Es isch ebe mal e Ziit cho wo mer eus nüme duldet het.
Mir sind verjagt worde, wo immer mir uftaucht sind, und
hend eus drumm meh und meh unter d`Stei
zruggzoge.
So isches cho, dass mir vergesse gange sind.
Au wenn du eus no nie gseh hesch,
simmer immerno da.
––––
With Es Meitli het welle z’Tanz goh (von «Der Tüfel a’s Tänzer») Sophie Germanier, together with Dustin Kenel, go in search of traces from old dances in Switzerland. From the 14th century onwards, dancing was regulated throughout Switzerland by moral mandates and dancing was banned throughout the country.
But what happened before the ban on dancing? What dances were danced before? And where do they still slumber today?
Sophie Germanier and Dustin Kenel will continue their research at marytwo in Lucerne, in the sabl. Not alone, however, but with Wurm (worm). Dustin Kenel and Sophie Germanier will keep asking Wurm about the old forgotten dances. Because Wurm knows everything. Wurm can wind its way through the layers of time on earth, can digest, update and translate the information. Wurm is not only that little slippery creature in the ground, but also you, spectators, accomplices and critics. You are also Wurm.
We look forward to your input and tips, memories, visions and thoughts about dances before the times of the dance ban in the Middle Ages.
Write to us at any time at: sophie.germanier[at]gmail.com
Supported by: FUKA-Fonds Stadt Luzern
Everything, everywhere, all the time, during and after, there you go.
The idea is.
Spit on the anti-pop
Making things with yours fingers on machines.
about being anti-anxious
Making pretty poems in pretty loops, in nasty bass.
Provoking risk
A risk, no doubt, with the good old dog.
In concrets terms.
A white, luminous space hosts music, sound, samples, a character, microphone, instruments, non-know-how.
To work on an elastic fluid that vibrates.