PHOTOGRAPHY
with Milo Keller
Following the success of the exhibition resulting from the Automated Photography research project at Paris Photo in 2021 and then at the Galerie l'elac in 2022, the ECAL is exporting this project to Plateform-L in Seoul from 17 September to 8 October 2022, through an immersive audiovisual exhibition.
DESIGN FOR LUXURY & CRAFTSMANSHIP
Jury : Céline Vogt, Head of Education, Michelangelo Foundation, Geneva Chiara Anelli, Communication Director, Hermès Switzerland, Geneva Philippe Malouin, Designer, London Prix De Bethune : Camille Dutoit
FINE ARTS
Symposium : HOW SOON IS NOW? HISTORIES AND FIGURES OF YOUTH This symposium is the first stage of the research project How Soon Is Now? Histories and Figures of Youth. It questions “youth” as a conceptual, aesthetic, andpolitical figure born with modernity in the visual arts, popular culture, and the humanities. At the same time, this project proposes to examine the implications ofthe problematic category of "youth" in contemporary art and thought. By exploring the processes in which youth is constituted through its forms of representation, thisproject intends to render intelligible the aesthetic and political dimensions of youth, and to grasp it as a historical allegory allowing for a reconsideration of thecontemporary in the light of its most lively site. What image(s) does the notion of youth carry with it? What idea does it have of itself? How can we talk about it beyond ingrained ideas and the fantasies that society projects on it (at least in Western culture), making it simultaneously a force, a market, an age, a culture, a piece of a history which which we only began writing inthe twentieth-century, and which today has reached its critical stage? In recent history, the notion of youth has so often been conflated with “bringing down the house” that we now expect everything from it: to reinvent us, to shake us up, to carry us, to succeed in what others have failed at (establishing the most open communities possible), to build bridges for the future, to be radical, to be uncompromising where anyone outside of youth has already given up, to be desirable where others are overwhelmed. But with what means? If not those that young people make themselves, for themselves, with elements that they alone will have chosen? With their culture, their places, their clandestinity. Because that which is not yet over happens in the shadows of the world. Youth is a secret. “How Soon Is Now?”, The Smiths once asked. When is it, now?
FILM STUDIES
Participation of Master Cinema students Léa Célestine Bernasconi and Leopold Helbich Frey in the Jury of the Réseau Cinéma CH during the 35th edition of the Fribourg International Film Festival (FIFF)
PHOTOGRAPHY
with Laurence Bonvin
Stammering This involves taking an idea, a project in progress or a project that has already been completed but not satisfactorily, and pushing it further, both from a conceptual and/or aesthetic point of view, as well as from a production point of view. To experience what can be improved in a project compared to a first realisation. Revisiting a classic. It is also about testing ideas, taking risks, pushing a process further, experimenting.
PHOTOGRAPHY
with RVB Books/Matthieu Charon & Rémi Faucheux
Starting from the premise that the book constitutes both an alternative practice to the exhibition and an alternative exhibition practice - alternative exhibition practices insofar as the book and the printed word are essentially modes of visibility of art; alternative practices to the exhibition because this means of visibility is very different from what is usually called an exhibition - we consider the book to be the medium that is perfectly suited to soon-to-be-graduated photographers.
PHOTOGRAPHY
with Marco Poloni
The Future, Inverted, or: Avoiding Stupidity Produce a visual and sound image device - moving and still images, objects, sounds and texts - that articulates a future and your model for thinking about it. This future can be possible, probable or preferred, personal or social.
PHOTOGRAPHY
with Natacha Lesueur
The students develop a project over the whole semester, on a freely chosen subject, by submitting it regularly to the critical eye and advice of the professor. Argumentation and analysis are stimulated. The aim is to examine the issues involved in photography as an author and to develop a personal expression, which could potentially lead to the students' diploma work. Particular attention is paid to the argumentation of the work, at the different stages of its development.
PHOTOGRAPHY
with Natacha Lesueur
Based on projects around a common theme, the students develop a personal and in-depth work over the entire semester. The project must be developed, clarified, modified if necessary, and enriched throughout the semester, as the students conduct research, reflections, and experiments, and as they consult with the professor. During these regular consultations, the students address the various aspects related to the conception, production and realization of a photographic work...
PHOTOGRAPHY
with Milo Keller
The course aims to develop a particular knowledge and sensitivity for all types of light. It invites the students to free creation, to the autonomy of elaboration and realization of a personal project.
PHOTOGRAPHY
with Milo Keller, MAP
In Summer 2019, thirteen students from the ECAL Master’s in Photography programme supervised by Milo Keller travelled to Japan to work on thirteen individual projects in collaboration with Japanese photographer Taisuke Koyama within the framework of the Tokyo Photographic Research project. The students’ artworks range from still and moving images to computer-generated photographic visuals and explore multiple facets of the Japanese megalopolis which is, once again, undergoing major transformation in preparation for the 2020 Summer Olympic Games. Some projects focus on aspects specific to the city, from the destruction of small residential houses to the construction of the gigantic Olympic Village and the conquest of new territories by the sea. Other works investigate distinctive Japanese culture such as home-cooked food, the appetite for designing humanoid robots, the blending of child and adult worlds in manga, pachinko gambling, the reinvention of ikebana and young girls as ‘rising stars.’ Finally, the works seek to visually represent more abstract concepts such as loneliness, emptiness and intimacy in a city that, due to its density, size and power, offers a challenging, fascinating and extremely stimulating complexity to the eyes of the thirteen photographers. Higurashi has been presented at Espace Commines in Paris in November 2021, inside the exhibition Automated Photography during Paris Photo. Head of Photography Milo Keller Invited Teacher Taisuke Koyama Assistants Florian Amoser Calum Douglas Graphic Design Thomas Le Provost Typefaces Craft by ECAL/Benoit Brun & Raphaël De la Morinerie ITC Garamond Std Head of Culture and Communications Embassy of Switzerland in Japan Jonas Pulver DGES/Summer University Maxline Stettler Photography Students Emidio Battipaglia Robin Bervini Jasmine Deporta Anja Karolina Furrer Alessia Gunawan Christian Harker Jung-Ting Hu Johanna Hullár Philipp Klak Doruk Kumkumoglu Igor Pjörrt Jelly Luise Gedvile Tamosiunaite Publisher ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne higurashi.zone Higurashi is available at ecal-shop.ch .
with Patrick Keller
(Re-)Viewing Paik is a joint research initiative between Switzerland and South-Korea that involves Prof. Patrick Keller from ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne (HES-SO), Dr. Sang Ae Park from the Nam June Paik Art Center and archives (NJPAC) in South Korea, and Dr. Christian Babski from fabric | ch, an architecture and information technology collective based in Lausanne. The main long-term objective of this joint and interdisciplinary research, based on the archives of Korean artist Nam June Paik (1932–2006), is to establish novel types of online exhibition curating and design, which must take shape digitally at any viewer's (visitor's) place or housing, and to virtually populate it, in an autonomous way. The results of this initial joint work, which will take the form of a functional "demo" (proof of concept), will be used in parallel to formulate a more detailed research project which will then be submitted to a national funding agency.
DESIGN FOR LUXURY & CRAFTSMANSHIP
Jury : Nieves Contreras, Creative Director, Lladro, Valencia Alberto Cavalli, Director, Michelangelo Foundation, Geneva Guillaume Delvigne, Designer, Paris Prix De Bethune : Sarah Yao
with Davide Fornari, Jonas Berthod
The research project Swiss Graphic Design and Typography Revisited is divided into three sub-projects: ‘Principles of Education’, ‘Networks of Practice’ and ‘Strategies of Dissemination’. This three-year project is the biggest research collaboration established in the design field since the SNSF began its activities.
PHOTOGRAPHY
with Marco Poloni
Projects realized by the second year class of the Bachelor of Photography, within the framework of the course Cine-photography directed by Marco Poloni during the first and second semester 2020-2021.
Artificial Intelligence-Aided Type Design AIZI research projects is a collaboration between ECAL and EPFL Computer Vision Laboratory. Its aim is to develop an artificial intelligence tool to help the creation of hanzi. The idea is to train an AI to generate glyphs from a small number of ‘seed’ characters, using Generative Adversarial Network (GAN): two algorithms fighting each other, endlessly attempting to outperform one another. Chinese script is rich of thousands of hanzi, but their construction is, on many point, very logical and systematic. It processes by assembling a limited number of radicals in order to produce new signs. For the designer, a major difficulty is that depending of the surrounding components, the design of the radicals changes, always self-adapting to the context, in order to achieve harmonious forms.
with Davide Fornari, Matthieu Cortat, Jonas Berthod, Chiara Barbieri
Jan Tschichold’s essay Die neue Typographie (The New Typography, 1928) is a game-changing book, acclaimed as the curtain raiser of modern graphic design. While it takes the form of a critical essay and an operative manual, its sources have been understudied because of their difficult identification. This project aims to reconstruct the body of sources that Tschichold drew on to understand the broader cultural context of the book, through an international conference on its impact and a travelling exhibition.
This research focusses on ways explored in typography to use letters as means of expression in order to emphasize the semantic, phonetic or visual qualities of language.
with Stéphane Kropf, Thibault Walter
Phantom Power questions the social configurations of the non-audible narratives of aural practices in performances and public sound installations.
with Younès Klouche Camille Blin, Christophe Guberan, Anniina Koivu, Julie Richoz, Anthony Guex, Chris Kabel
The potential of shape memory materials in furniture design.
with Florian Amoser, Claus Gunti, Milo Keller
The Automated Photography research project (2019–2021) is conducted by Milo Keller in the framework of the MA in Photography at ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne. It is a continuation of the research project Augmented Photography, equally conducted at ECAL (2016–2017), which aimed to question the mutability of the digital image, transformed both in its physical materiality and in its virtual expression.
with François Bovier, Stéphanie Serra
To date, there is no European-wide history of video art. It is this gap that the present research programme proposes to fill. Firstly by gathering data on the artists, the works and the events that enabled the emergence of this new artistic practice in the 1960s, or that were important in its development in the following years in Europe, and by bringing to light specific national conditions of production and distribution.
PHOTOGRAPHY
with Jonas Marguet
Enabled by Design is a joint research project between EPFL and ECAL, funded by Gebert Rüf Stiftung, which aims to foster collaboration between young entrepreneurs involved in technological projects and designers.
The research project Design management for start-ups focused on the integration of design in innovation processes. Its objective was to promote the use of design within mainly technological start-ups and to create tools and methodologies to foster collaboration between designers and entrepreneurs.
This research project looks into the shift from video art to new media, taking a major but little-studied event, the Locarno VideoArt Festival (1980-2001), as a case study: a pioneering space for broadcasting video art in Europe and a place for exploring electronic art which took place every year from 1980 to 2001 on Monte Verità.
FILM STUDIES
The diploma Jury of the Master Cinema 2018-20.
DESIGN FOR LUXURY & CRAFTSMANSHIP
Jury : Franziska Kessler, Founder of Frankiska Kessler Gallery, Zurich Marco Sammicheli, Design Curator, Triennale, Milan Alfredo Haeberli, Designer, Zürich Prix De Bethune : Charlotte Therre
FILM STUDIES
Diplômé de l'ECAL en 2002 Après deux documentaires remarqués ( Le Mariage en Afrique et Des Bleus dans la police ), il décidait en 2009 de filmer l’installation en Chine d’une famille fribourgeoise, restant sagement derrière sa caméra, en observateur, comme pour éviter de devoir affronter lui-même cette immersion dans un pays dont il est, qu’il le veuille ou non, issu. C’est alors, pour la première fois, qu’il a ressenti le besoin de partir à la découverte de ses racines. Car ne dit-on pas qu’il est impossible de savoir où l’on va si on ne sait pas d’où l’on vient?
PHOTOGRAPHY
with Marco Poloni
FILM STUDIES
On the set of the web-series "Bâtards" directed by Malou Briand and Raphaël Meyer, students of Master Cinéma- major scriptwriting. The project won the 3rd edition of the Fantastic Web Contest at NIFFF 2019. Produced by Box Productions and RTS.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
with Mario de Vega
This project is both a book and a portable server programmed to open a WiFi network. Your smartphone becomes a sound device by producing an assigned frequency and creating small ephemeral communities. Programming ECAL/Callum Ross
PHOTOGRAPHY
with Clément Lambelet
PHOTOGRAPHY
with Natacha Lesueur
PHOTOGRAPHY
with Marco Poloni
The research project Smartphone Peripheral Companions explores new forms of interaction with the data flows passing through our smartphone, questioning the status of total object that this device has acquired.
PHOTOGRAPHY
with Milo Keller, MAP
In Summer 2019, thirteen students of ECAL Master in Photography supervised by Milo Keller, traveled to Japan to develop thirteen personal projects in collaboration with Taisuke Koyama and TOKYO PHOTOGRAPHIC RESEARCH. From still and moving images to computer-generated photographic visuals, students’ artworks explore a wide variety of aspects of the Japanese megalopolis which is, once again, undergoing major transformations in preparation for the 2020 Summer Olympic Games. Some projects focus on concrete aspects of the city, from the destruction of small residential houses to the construction of the gigantic Olympic village and the conquest of new territories by the sea. Other works investigate particularities of Japanese culture such as food in a family setting, the desire to generate humanoid robots, the confusion of child and adult worlds in manga, Pichinko Gambling , the reinvention of Ikebana and the rising stars among young girls. Finally, works seek to visualise more abstract concepts such as loneline
FILM STUDIES
Ketsia Stocker, student in Master Cinema - major Production, on the set of the series "Bulle" by Anne Deluz, 2019 (prod. Intermezzo Films/RTS)
FILM STUDIES
Technology and Research in Art and Design Friday 8 November, 10.30–19.30 IKEA Auditorium, ECAL, Renens www.researchday.ch Résumé The symposium explored the links between technology and research, with artists, designers and scholars in these fields from all over the world, in discussion with ECAL faculty members. Keynote speeches, conversations, exhibitions and concerts marked the overlapping territory of research and technological innovation. Program Welcome , Alexis Georgacopoulos, director, ECAL Introductory notes , Davide Fornari, head of R&D and professor, ECAL Moderation by Arijana Walcott, emerging technology consultant, co-founder and COO, DART LABS, Zurich Data Materialization Natalie D. Kane, curator of digital design, Victoria and Albert Museum, London in conversation with Patrick Keller, professor, ECAL Keynote: How Can Type Influence How We Design Written Communication? Bianca Berning, font engineer, Dalton Maag, London introduced by Kai Bernau, professor, ECAL, and co-founder, Atelier Carvalho Bernau, The Hague Artists Residencies for Innovation Hugues Vinet, innovation and research director, IRCAM-Centre Pompidou, Paris in conversation with Nicolas Henchoz, director, EPFL+ECAL Lab The Aesthetics of Sustainability Christian Kaegi, founder, Qwstion, Zurich, and Fabrice Aeberhard, founder, Viu, Zurich in conversation with Thilo Alex Brunner, professor, ECAL, and art director, ON shoes, Zurich Keynote: Humanising Machines: The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Art and Design Christian Mio Loclair, art director and founder, Waltz Binaire, Berlin introduced by Pauline Saglio, head of BA Media & Interaction Design and professor, ECAL Keynote: Designing Citizenship in Unstable Times Ala Tannir, co-curator of the 22nd Milan Triennale Broken Nature and independent architect, New York introduced by Davide Fornari, head of R&D and professor, ECAL Audio performance curated by Thibault Walter, professor, ECAL The Invisible Other. Chapter 1. Vibrancy. When the Divinity Manifests. For visual obstructions, time-based media, light and signal refractions By Mario de Vega, sound artist, Mexico City/Berlin in partnership with La Becque | Artist Residency, La Tour-de-Peilz Throughout the day, exhibitions in the Kudelski Hall, l’elac Gallery and EPFL+ECAL Lab: • 100 beste Plakate 18 • ECAL Diplômes 2019 • Smartphone Peripheral Companions curated by Alain Bellet • Soft Machines curated by Camille Blin, Christophe Guberan and Skylar Tibbits, in collaboration with the MIT Department of Architecture and its Design Minor/Design Major Program. On the occasion of the symposium, ECAL launched the book Technology and Research in Art and Design edited by Davide Fornari and published by ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne. Technology and Research and Art and Design In collaboration with EPFL+ECAL Lab Supported by HES-SO Media partner: Creative Applications Network
FINE ARTS
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.
FILM STUDIES
Selection of Arena by Khadyja Mahfou Aidara, Mamadou Sané, Alarba Bousso, Malou Briand , Raphaël Meyer, Oumy Sarr Ndoye (Senegal, Switzerland), 2019 at the School Day in Winterhur. Made in the frame of the Master Cinema Grand Voyage in Dakar, Senegal, in collaboration with Alain Gomis.
DESIGN FOR LUXURY & CRAFTSMANSHIP
Jury : Sabine Marcelis, Designer, Rotterdam Tylor Brûlé, Editor in Chief and Founder of Monocle magazine, Zurich David Sadigh, Founder of Digital Luxury Group, Geneva Prix De Bethune : Clara Martin
INDUSTRIAL DESIGN
with Alain Bellet, Stéphane Halmaï-Voisard
CHIC (China Hardware Innovation Camp) is a program led by EPFL, in collaboration with HEC - Lausanne and ECAL. In interdisciplinary teams, students from different institutions have 9 months to create a prototype of a connected object. The final phase of the program takes students to Shenzhen and then Hong Kong to confront the challenges of industrialization, financing and the realities of the Chinese market.
The project is an investigation into the creative process of visual art through the concept of aurality, which explores sound, listening and auditory perception from a cultural perspective. It is about stepping beyond object culture to look at listening as part of the broader and richer cultural approach developed by studying the case of ECAL, its (human) actors and (non-human) agents.
with Camille Blin, Augustin Scott de Martinville, Maxime Guyon, Nicolas Polli Margherita Banchi, Thilo Alex Brunner, Christophe Guberan, Carolien Niebling
Aesthetics of Sustainability aims to explore and define the aesthetics of a new generation of sustainable materials.
FILM STUDIES
Mise au point , 19.05.2019, 20h18
FINE ARTS
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
with Arto Lindsay
Concerts ECAL ( mars 2019 ) Arto Lindsay Musicien ( chant & guitare ) et artiste, Rio www.artolindsay.com Jeudi 21 mars à 19h30 Studio Cinéma, ECAL Entrée libre Né en 1953, Arto Lindsay se situe à l’intersection de la musique et de l’art depuis plus de quatre décennies. En tant que membre de DNA, il a contribué à la fondation de la No Wave fin des années 70 à New York. Il a ensuite développé une musique pop extrêmement subversive, un mélange de styles américain et brésilien, notamment avec Ambitious Lovers. Au cours de sa carrière, Lindsay a également collaboré avec des artistes visuels et musicaux, dont Vito Acconci, Laurie Anderson, Animal Collective, Matthew Barney, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Rirkrit Tiravanija et Caetano Veloso. Il sera à l’ECAL pour un concert exceptionnel donnant la part belle au Brésil et aux guitares électriques.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
with Sami Benhadj, Patrick Keller, Benjamin Muzzin
Produced during video and 3D design courses led by Sami Benhadj, Patrick Keller & Benjamin Muzzin between 2015 and 2018.