Master
Visual Arts

FINE ARTS

Deemed Visionless

FINE ARTS

Usefulless

with Ricca

In his essay,  Theory of Metamorphosis , philosopher Emanuele Coccia celebrates the “power of caterpillars” allowing them to transition from one existence to another without having to die first nor being born again. The caterpillar thus in its full autonomy shakes up the natural order of things. This in-between state materializes in the cocoon, an intermediate yet complete stage, totalizing more than the sum of two halves. The cocoon is a circumscribed territory which has no limits, not completely life, not totally death. This solipsistic space is plural, it is host to the liquid form, embracing simultaneity and different realities. The artworks presented here echo the principle of transition which govern this exhibition. Through their relationship to space or how they question the function of an art object, through the staging of intimacy, these works identify a limit and almost mechanically, ask what lies beyond. Usefulless  is a quality specific to useful objects that are nowhere to be found when needed. Opening a middle way through the binary definition  useful/useless , the term  usefulless  defines a transitional state of utility. Here inside the exhibition, the influence of context reveals the intrinsic ambivalence of objects, useful only based on a need, at a given time, for something or to someone.  Usefulless  opens a dialogue between the works of the students of the Master Fine Arts at ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne and pieces from artists whose respective practices explore similar avenues.

FINE ARTS

Symposium KILL Yr IDOLS

KILL Yr IDOLS The 20th century invented youth. It has inspired the century in all matters, it has become its horizon. We move forward according to its tastes. Until the end of the World War II, youth was thus only rarely considered, as if in a transitory state, stuck in an awkward age. Then, all of a sudden, with the rise of pop culture, the market economy started to seduce it. A phenomenon that was long regarded as an embarrassing growth spurt ended up dominating the world. The 21th century is nineteen, twenty years old. And youth still remains a mystery. One relishes to conceptualize and historicize it. One also knows that youth never stops to toss and turn. It exists in order to produce moments, ideas (immediately subjected to aging), new gestures, or which youth believes to be new? Amnesiacs are the content ones. One must see how the history of youth has been sketched in the last century, as a straight line, or maybe in successive layers, strata, sedimentations. Less than a century has produced a tome of attitudes that describe each and every generation, the way they took possession of the cultural field, of trends, languages, postures and all theses signs that aim to destroy the next generation (in order to provide new space for the possible). Invariants stand in the midst of all this nonetheless: the same doubts, rage, opposition, unease, fake arrogance, discoveries and the same gold. Politicized, or at least concerned, youth 2.0 is soaked in a yet to be analyzed opposition between the speed rate of its exchanges that it constantly develops further and a desire to tame late capitalism's irrevocable damages: the disintegration of the planet and its climate. Outpacing capitalist realism might well have become the new horizon of a youth that was formed by its very capabilities of speed. In this setup, what are the new postures, ideas, excesses and transformations that are – again and again – capable of inventing youth? How will the new emerge if we remain at the core of an exhausting recommencement ? Philippe Azoury

FINE ARTS

Exposition 'Ending Explained'

with MAAV

FINE ARTS

Master Class with Pierre Bismuth

Pierre Bismuth a présenté à l’ECAL son premier long métrage en tant que réalisateur Where is Rocky II ? Né à Neuilly-sur-Seine en 1963, Pierre Bismuth est un artiste contemporain qui s’intéresse à la règle comme manifestation essentielle de l’activité humaine. Son travail, qui couvre des champs de connaissance très divers, se nourrit des lois inhérentes de chaque système auquel il s’intéresse, dans le but de trouver leur point de rupture. En 2005, il remporte avec Michel Gondry et Charlie Kaufman l’Oscar du meilleur scénario original pour son synopsis de  Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind . Where is Rocky II ? (93') 2016 Un détective privé et un duo de scénaristes hollywoodiens sont engagés dans un défi autour de l’existence d’un mystérieux objet créé et caché dans le désert, il y a 40 ans, par l’artiste américain Ed Ruscha. En traitant la matière documentaire comme s’il s’agissait d’une fiction, Pierre Bismuth réalise ce qu’il appelle une fausse-fiction.

FINE ARTS

Conference Dominique Gonzales Foerster

FINE ARTS

Workshop Trajal Harrell & Cécilia Bengolea

with Stéphanie Moisdon, Shirin Yousefi

In practice, Trajal Harrell will introduce participants to runway categories and dance techniques, guiding them through warm-up exercises and curated music playlists that shape his artistic approach. Meanwhile, Cecilia Bengolea will explore the concepts of self-presentation and performativity, inviting participants to engage in a dynamic investigation of identity, whether real or constructed. Through movement and expression, she aims to question the fluidity of identity and the ways in which it can be shaped or reimagined in a performative context.

FINE ARTS

Workshop Vittorio Brodman & Mathis Altman

with Stéphanie Moisdon, Shirin Yousefi

The POOL workshop focuses on interdisciplinary practices and involves a wide variety of mediums. Its core is rooted in the ideas of sculpture and painting, as seen in the work of Mathis Altmann and Vittorio Brodmann. The two artists explore techniques for embedding narrative structures, highlighting representational elements while investigating how abstraction can lead to distortion, the grotesque, and the fantastical.

FINE ARTS

Macula Workshop avec David Douard

with David Douard

Questionner l’économie des images et l’idée d’authorship à travers un exercice de manipulations d’images digitales vers un objet physique. Remettre en question le rapport d’une génération artistique « Google » qui se servait volontiers dans un gouffre d’image internet pour les manipuler à foison. Aujourd’hui ce rapport est contesté par de nouvelles technologies servant et à donner une valeur et une authenticité au détournement ( NFT ) David Douard propose ainsi un workshop de sérigraphie sur 3 jours comme un moment de jouissance productive où les enjeux seraient l’appropriation par la superposition. C’est une réflexion sur l’image à capturer et sur la potentialité subjective d’une image à travers le rapport au texte, la poésie ou le langage.

FINE ARTS

Keramicos

with Matthew Lutz Kinoy, Natsuko Uchino

FINE ARTS

Talk given by Camille Henrot

Camille Henrot, Plasticienne, New York www.camillehenrot.fr Née en 1978, Camille Henrot vit et travaille à New York. L’artiste française développe une pratique variée qui mêle film, dessin, sculpture et installation. En puisant ses inspirations et ses sujets dans la vie quotidienne et dans la littérature, la mythologie, le cinéma et l’anthropologie, l’oeuvre de Camille Henrot reconsidère avec acuité les typologies d’objets et les systèmes de pensées établis. En 2013, dans le cadre de la Smithsonian résidence à Washington DC, elle réalise le film  Grosse Fatigue , avec lequel elle remporte le Lion d’argent à la Biennale de Venise. Lauréate du Prix Nam June Paik 2014 et du Edvard Munch Art Award 2015, Camille Henrot a également participé aux Biennales de Lyon, Berlin et Sydney et a bénéficié d’expositions personnelles dans des lieux prestigieux tels que le Schinkel Pavillon à Berlin, la Kunsthalle de Vienne, le New Museum à New York ou encore au Palais de Tokyo à Paris pour une carte blanche en 2017. Ses prochaines expositions majeures auront lieu à Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery (2019) et à la National Gallery of Victoria de Melbourne (2020).

FINE ARTS

Symposium with Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster

Avec ce workshop, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster prolonge sa réflexion sur les apparitions et les transfomations qu’elle pratique depuis 2012 (M.2062 et QM.15) autour du cinema, de l’opéra et de la littérature avec des personnages réels ou fictionnels qui représentent chacun un point de vue sur l’art, la représentation et l’existence. Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster (born in 1965) is a French artist and an in influential figure in international contemporary art. She is known for her great variety of work in video projection, photography, and spatial installations. Recent solo exhibitions include “1887–2058” at Centre Pompidou, Paris and K.20 in Dusseldorf (2015/2016), “Temporama” at Mam, Rio de Janeiro (2015), “Splendide Hotel” at the Palacio de Cristal/Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid (2014), “Chronotopes and Dioramas” at the Dia Art Foundation, New York (2009); “TH.2058” in the Turbine Hall, Tate Modern, London (2008). She also participated in Skulptur Projekte Münster (2007) and Documenta XI, Kassel (2002). Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster has also staged “M.2062” in London, Amsterdam, Dublin, Kyoto and Paris between 2012 and 2014, and QM.16 in Paris in 2016. Her most recent films are “Otello 1887”, “Vera and Mr Hyde” and “Lola Montez in Berlin”.

FINE ARTS

Workshop with Georgia Sagri

Georgia Sagri

FINE ARTS

Workshop with Matthew Lutz-Kinoy

FINE ARTS

Mélody Lu – Merci d'avoir participé

by Mélody Lu

A sculpture-installation where you’re invited to sit beside this strange character: a large, soft dog — it looks like it's wearing pajamas. It’s waiting for something, though we don’t know what. Its gaze is fixed. If you get closer, you can overhear, faintly through its headphones, the stories being told to it — stories of grief, but also of love and joy. Stories of people reclaiming their voice. A voice they were never given, until now. Pedro says that as long as someone remembers you, you continue to exist. Even one person is enough. Say the names. We must say the names — especially the ones they tried to erase from the list of lives that matter.

FINE ARTS

Camila Polania – Instructions of Rematriation

by Camila Polania

Some say the body arrives first, and the soul takes longer. This installation begins with that delay, in the tension between presence and absence. Instructions of Rematriation is a video installation projected onto a wind-moved fabric, a surface that never fully settles. In front, white Rimax chairs evoke everyday spaces of waiting across Latin America: porches, patios, sidewalks. The work follows the passing of a single day, tracing the slow return to the body after displacement. Through video, writing, textile, and sound, the installation holds a kind of return, not geopolitical, but personal and ancestral: a political and spiritual reconnection with what was once left behind.

FINE ARTS

Maia Gavina – Space for Everything: On Love

by Maia Gavina

For a total democratization of the audiovisual, we must think the curatorship of the scared space of the cinema theater without considering intentionality of the possible films there projected of inhabitting that space. That will or intuition doesn't inherently grant them the right of such recognition. Materials of the most varied origins (reels, home movies, TV, YouTube videos, etc) are equally capable of detaining the enlightening qualities of a project thought cinematographically in its inception. This curatorial project reflecting on the topic of love seeks to apply this intersectional approach to its selection, putting into question the  limitations of cinema as a mercantile medium.

FINE ARTS

Axel Mattart – Was it the dream of a poppy ?

by Axel Mattart

Tired of Fighting Against Your Brain ?

FINE ARTS

Giorgio Cassano – ZONA DI SACRIFICIO

by Giorgio Cassano

ZONA DI SACRIFICIO is a film study that fuses documentary, ethnography, and poetic montage around the Fiume Tara—Taranto’s revered “miracle river.” Through a tapestry of memories, legends, visions, and personal testimonies, the film explores how this sacred source has sustained local identity and resilience, even as the encroachment of the ILVA steelworks has turned the surrounding landscape into a literal “sacrifice zone.” It is both a visual elegy to a once-pure watercourse and a poignant reflection on environmental violence, tracing the uneasy coexistence of spiritual reverence and industrial devastation in a community striving to reclaim its voice.

FINE ARTS

Ludovico Orombelli – Sinopia

by Ludovico Orombelli

Sinopia is the culmination of a research project carried out at ECAL on the techniques and images that have shaped the Western imaginary. A scene from The "Legend of the True Cross", painted in the 15th century, has been reproduced using the same materials that its author, Piero della Francesca, employed to sketch the preparatory drawing on the wall before completing it in paint. The image thus reappears in its earliest phase, as a ghostly presence that invites us to reflect on the presence and role of the past within our present time.