as slow as possible — collectif curatorial en résidence — 2023/2025
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Love Stories (double trouble)
To close five years of programming at Espace 3353, Julie Marmet and Vicente Lesser invite artists, colleagues and friends to celebrate the collective nature of the work within an independent art space.
Love Stories (double trouble) makes visible the bonds and relationships, whether of work or friendship, that enable an art space to be vibrant and plural, to collectively imagine new ways of producing and thinking about artistic and cultural projects. The exhibition highlights the multiple articulations and fluidity between the private and the professional in the sphere of contemporary art, and the sometimes complex relations and relationships that artists maintain with one another. Collaboration is seen as a strategy of resistance to ubiquitous individualization, and as a commitment to collective, sustainable practices over the long term.
Love Stories (double trouble) brings together the work of 20 artist duos, formed for the occasion or not: life partners, adelphs or members of chosen families, lifelong friends, research colleagues and companions in struggle.
With : Anaïs Wenger & Basile Jeandin Angeles Rodriguez & Giona Bierens de Haan Barbezat – Villetard Camille Dumond & Lou Masduraud Camille Kaiser & Jamal Nxedlana Dent de Lion (Flora Mottini & Camille Farrah Buhler) Giada Olivotto & Camilla Paolino Gina Proenza & Tristan Lavoyer Jeanne & Zoé Tullen Léa Katharina Meier & Max Léo Hauri Lucas & Paulo Wirz Maria Guta & Lauren Huret Martin Jakob & Colin Raynal Matheline Marmy & Jonathan Vidal Pauline Cordier & Charlotte Schaer Quintana E. (Jessy Razafimandimby & Niels Trannois) Raquel Fernández & Sergio Rojas Chaves rita elhajj & ghalas charara Sabrina Fernández Casas & Bérénice Pinon Stirnimann – Stojanovic
The affective turn refers to the moment when scientific research reconsidered emotions in the understanding of social and cultural phenomenon. This recognition of the affects passes in particular by their objectivation and by the establishment of protocols of measurement, which allow scientists and researchers to take into account their role in the human and social activities.
Initially trained in neurosciences, Eva Zornio operated these last months a real turn of the making. This turn is illustrated by the incorporation of glass in her practice, through the context of a residency at the CERFAV–Centre Européen de Recherches et Formation aux Arts Verriers, where she experiments with the physical properties, the limits and the reflections, both aesthetic and metaphorical, of the material.
At 3353, Eva Zornio proposes a manifestation of this double turn, through the symbolic reconstitution of the glass building of the Biotech Campus in Geneva. In the exhibition space, we find ourselves facing a labyrinth that we cannot define, whether it is a laboratory for modeling affects, an abandonned open-space because it is unsuitable for any activity, a storage place for a gang of emotion dealers, or an aquarium where we would be the permanent residents.
Thus, carried away by the wave, we walk around, and we listen.
– After a first degree in biology and a master’s in neuroscience, Eva Zornio (CH- 1987) turned to the field of arts. Circulating between institutions and independent structures, she performed among others at the Swiss Institute in Rome (2019). She exhibited at the Fondation d’Entreprise Ricard (2019), at Kunsthaus Langenthal (2019), at Forde (2018); in 2020 she participated in the exhibition of the Bourses de la Ville de Genève at the Centre d’Art Contemporain; she was nominated for the Swiss Art Awards 2021; in 2022 she exhibited at Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen and was selected for the 2023 publication of the Cahiers d’Artistes of Pro Helvetia. –
His practice is a patient investigation into the formation of minerals, whether taking place millions of years ago in metamorphic and sedimentary rocks, or on the organized workbench of his studio.
Cultivating ambiguity, the pieces presented in his installations are enigmatic, as much in their geological composition as in their metaphysical properties. Their nature and dating are difficult to ascertain and these inconsistencies provoke a rupture in the narrative that one tries to attach to them.
In the space, a strange invocation is felt, emitted simultaneously by the presence of the stones and by the modulation of ambient elements. This could be a cryptic recipe or incantation, the remembrance of what is yet to come or that of a distant past.
– Hunter Longe (1985, California) lives and works in Geneva. He has a BFA from California College of the Arts, San Francisco, and an MFA from the Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam. Recent group and solo exhibitions have been at Krone Couronne, Biel/ Bienne ; Alte Fabrik, Rapperswil ; Binz39, Zurich ; Centre d’art Contemporain Genève ; Musée Cantonal de Geologie, Lausanne; NoMoon, New York; Et al. Gallery, San Francisco ; LambdaLambdaLambda, Pristina ; and Hordaland Kunstsenter, Bergen. In 2021, a book of his writing and drawings entitled DreamOre was published by Coda Press and he was a winner of the Swiss Art Awards. –
Cavalcades of knights rise up from the smoke of cigarettes. There is a smell of sand, of dunes’ dust. The landscape is veiled, in the distance, one can hardly distinguish the presence of a city.
The characters painted by Noemi Pfister seem to live in a shared semi-reality, a synesthetic world in which plants have faces and colors have memories. Although one is tempted to read her paintings as a perfect dystopia, a premonitory vision of the earth after a hundred years of necro-capitalism, Noemi Pfister rather suggests the apocalypse as a form of liberation, perhaps even leading to a resolution.
— Noemi Pfister is a graduate of HGK-Basel (2019) and HEAD-Geneva (2016). Happily Aging & Dying is the artist’s first solo exhibition in Geneva and consists exclusively of new paintings produced for the occasion. The exhibition is accompanied by a text by Geneva-based author Lucas Cantori, written in conversation with Noemi Pfister’s practice. —
Research and performance residencies
Basile Dinbergs Qui ne peut regarder à ses pieds marche trop vite 17.09 — 01.10
– As part of a two-week research residency at Espace 3353, Basile Dinbergs reinterprets and re-enacts a habit.
While he has been developing an active and almost daily practice of collecting for several years, this quasi-archive of objects and thoughts has become over time a series of “micro-museums of the ordinary”.
At 3353, Basile changes the format of this practice and makes it public through two performances. The proposal is an essay around gleaning, gathering and collecting as a dialogue practice.
“When you are looking for something, it is better to stay still and observe, than to run without looking.” –
Jony Valado Pândego 01.10 — 15.10
In the continuation of his research on the relationship of beings with the weight of things (material, tangible or invisible) Jony Valado proposes a form of personal anthology of his relationship to weight, as well as slightly burlesque techniques to succeed in carrying what weighs us down.
Between a critique of modernity and a performative experimentation, the proposal aims to explore the relationships between human and donkey, to understand the way matter transits (or is transported) and comes to trigger inequalities.
“To dance the slow waltz of my peasant grandparents, from the fields to their houses. Spitting olive pits as far as possible. Putting on wooden clogs, slamming them on the ground and imitating the donkey. Shouting in Portuguese, explaining myself in French, exposing myself in English. On all fours, I tell some stories… on my back, a stone. It crushes me! Glued to the ground, I move each of my buttocks to the rhythm of a kind of flamenco and then I invoke the spirit of the donkey that inhabits me.” –
With the participation of Meryl Schmalz & Basile Dinbergs
Cecilia Moya Rivera I’m still analfabeta 10.10 — 04.11
– Language is central to Cecilia Moya Rivera’s artistic, writing and research practice, and is understood as a lexical form, a historical witness and a source of power. Placing language at the center of research and its often collective artistic transpositions, Cecilia Moya Rivera treats the notion of polyphony as a subject and as a methodology. In her work, she researches and exposes the traces of colonialism in language and her performance, exhibition and publication projects propose ways of remembering, collectively, with words.
As part of her residency at 3353, Cecilia Moya Rivera will propose two performative formats, considering the sharing of language as an act of love. –
« ¿te duelen las palabras? Do the words hurt you?
¿cuál es mi lengua materna si la que tenía me la robaron en 1492? What is my mother tongue if the one I had was kidnapped in 1492? »
jpp d’humeur à détester / d’humeur à lâcher deux trois je t’aime 05.11 — 19.11
– jpp works with text and words, and spatializes them through sound installations, videos and publications. Her work draws directly from the everyday and flushes out the non-events that punctuate it. Her writing practice gives a poetic form to these micro-situations that take place in interpersonal relationships, in or off-line. Always anchored in a perspective of questioning the relationships of domination, the stories written and told by jpp are as many ways of theorizing the daily life and of apprehending the intimate as eminently political.
Her recent projects reflect a deep interest in and work on the languages of love. For the opening of her two-week residency at Espace 3353, jpp invites the public to come and meet various textual, sonic and visual materials present in her ongoing research on expressions of love and the eternal quest to express it honestly. –
Dans le prolongement de son travail et de ses recherches sur la présence des corps dans l’espace public, Jeanne Tara s’attelle à décortiquer les formes et représentations liées aux arts appliqués dans l’architecture. Profondément ancrée dans une réflexion sur les savoirs et le faire, elle met en oeuvre un questionnement matériel et physique, à la fois sur la durabilité des techniques ainsi que sur l’adaptabilité du travail et des outils à des corps pour lesquels ils n’ont pas été pensés.
La mesure des possibles est la mise en scène d’une société qui ne serait pas uniquement basée sur des principes d’extraction, d’accélération et d’accumulation. Dans l’espace, des enseignes en fer forgé sont les traces de cette civilisation perdue dont la signalétique serait le seul vestige. Des êtres chimériques habitant le lieu semblent eux, faire figure d’emblèmes à cette société imaginée. –
Hard-Won Images is the new iteration of Roman Selim Khereddine’s research conducted in Morocco. Featuring an interaction between a man and his dog filmed at the Casablanca dog market, the installation breeds discourse on found footage with that of “poor” images. A reflection is established on the filmic genre that stems from these amateur, smartphone shot videos. In their joint movement, human and canine –the latter standing in for all those staged and commodified –, could even claim to represent the history and trajectory of the relationship between humans and other animals.
Roman Selim Khereddine is a visual artist currently working mainly in video. “ Hard-Won Images ” at Espace 3353 is his first solo presentation in French-speaking Switzerland and will be followed by “Hard-Won Images 2” at Tunnel Tunnel, Lausanne. Both shows deal with material gathered in Morocco. Khereddine has obtained master’s degrees in history and Fine Arts. In 2019 he was awarded the Kiefer Hablitzel / Göhner art prize, in 2021 the work stipends of both the city and the canton of Zurich. He lives and works in Zurich.
From the starting point of giant-colored-baits given as treats to zoo animals, Sara Ravelli’s ongoing research on the concept of tamed-love takes a new focus.
Working around the tension of an object that can simultaneously appeal or disgust, she puts in space the images of an ever-ambivalent relationship of both affection and control, decoration and domination.
This plurisemic scenario aims to redirect attention to the anthropocentric and authoritative nature of the relationship humans maintain with the animal, perhaps as a metaphor of inter-personal relationships in the contemporary capitalism.
Sara Ravelli (IT-1993) lives and works between Geneva and Milan. She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts of Bergamo (IT) and more recently from Work.Master at HEAD (CH).
« He sat on the sofa, wanted to talk, but the sofa was too comfortable. »
Based on their common experience of parenthood, Caroline Schattling Villeval and Paul Paillet explore exhaustion, model the irreconcilability of parent-child sleep cycles and put into space an eventual calm that never arrives.
The home is here reduced to the bedroom. The light is subdued and evokes a circumscribed space. The night light neutralizes everything. The mattress is miniaturized and symbolizes both a place of reproduction and of non-production. The space of the exhibition is thought in function of the potential interactions of a child who must have nothing within reach.
No firing is the refusal not to work. A tribute to Lilie, to Bruce Springsteen, and to all those nights, lying down, without sleep.
