FLARE is a print magazine and an online platform expanding our exhibition space Photoforum Pasquart Biel, Switzerland. We are building different links between blog, print and exhibition, collaborating with photographers and experts, locals and friends.
J’ai choisi cette photo parce que c'est la première fois après avoir presque vécu 20 ans à Bienne qu’un journal présentait un portrait positif d'une musulmane – de plus pratiquante. J’ai reçu beaucoup de retours très touchants de la part de gens de ma communauté. Ils étaient vraiment heureux de voir enfin un autre visage à la Une – ou comme ils ont dit : de voir une musulmane qui n’est pas obligée de se justifier parce qu’elle porte le voile. Je pense que c'est un message d’espoir et d’encouragement pour une partie de nos citoyennes.
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Ich habe dieses Foto gewählt, weil sich das erste Mal in den fast 20 Jahren, die ich in Biel lebe, eine Zeitung für ein positives Portrait einer Muslima – dazu noch einer praktizierenden – interessiert. Ich habe sehr viele berührende Rückmeldungen aus meiner Gemeinde erhalten. Die Leute waren sehr glücklich, endlich ein anderes Gesicht auf der Titelseite zu sehen – oder wie sie sagten: Eine Muslima zu sehen, die sich nicht wegen ihres Kopftuches verteidigen muss. Ich denke, dies ist eine Botschaft, die einem Teil unserer Mitbürgerinnen Hoffnung gibt und sie ermutigt.
Del origen y la distancia, Elisa Bergel Melo, 2015
Elisa Bergel Melo, born in Caracas in 1989, is a visual artist who uses photography as her main medium. She studied at the New England School of Photography (United States), Grisart (Spain) and obtained her degree with emphasis in photography at the Veritas University in Costa Rica. Her work explores the inherent possibilities of photography, those related to the documentation of movement and time, the transformation through tautology, and its direct relationship with reality but also memory as two forces that meet in the image. She has participated in multiple exhibitions in Latin America, the Caribbean and the United States, in addition to having been selected for international residences such as SOMA Summer in 2016 in Mexico City. She currently lives and works in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.
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Elisa Bergel Melo, née à Caracas en 1989, est une artiste plasticienne qui utilise la photographie comme médieum principal. Elle a étudié à la New England School of Photography (États-Unis), à Grisart (Espagne) et a obtenu son diplôme avec spécialisation en photographie à l'Université Veritas au Costa Rica. Son travail explore les possibilités inhérentes à la photographie, celles liées à la documentation du mouvement et du temps, la transformation par la tautologie, ainsi que sa relation directe avec la réalité mais aussi avec la mémoire, entendues comme deux forces qui se rencontrent dans l'image. Elle a participé à de nombreuses expositions en Amérique latine, dans les Caraïbes et aux États-Unis, en plus d'avoir été sélectionnée pour des résidences internationales telles que SOMA Summer en 2016 à Mexico City. Elle vit et travaille actuellement à Santo Domingo, en République Dominicaine.
Joiri Minaya (*1990) is a New York based Dominican-United States multi-disciplinary visual artist. Her work navigates binaries in search of in-betweenness, investigating the female body within constructions of identity, multi-cultural social spaces and hierarchies. Recent works focus on questioning historic and contemporary representations of black and brown womanhood in relation to an imagined tropical identity from a decolonial stance. She attended the ENAV (Santo Domingo), the Altos de Chavón School and Parsons / The New School. Her work has been exhibited across the Dominican Republic, the United States and internationally.
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Joiri Minaya (*1990) est une artiste plasticienne multidisciplinaire basée à New York. Son travail est une exploration des binaires, à la recherche d'entre-deux, explorant le corps féminin au sein des constructions d'identité, des espaces sociaux multiculturels et des hiérarchies. Ses travaux récents remettent en question les représentations historiques et contemporaines de la féminité noire et de couleur en regard d’une identité tropicale imaginée à partir d'une position décoloniale. Elle s’est formée à l'ENAV (Santo Domingo), l'école Altos de Chavón et Parsons / The New School. Son travail a été exposé en République dominicaine, aux États-Unis et à l'étranger.
Dans le cadre de mes recherche sur les similitudes dans l'organisation géographique et temporelle des agglomérations humaines, je compose des assemblages d'images de villes dans mon atelier: formes, grilles, structures, destructions. Cette réutilisation et (ré)appropriation de matériel visuel existant puisé dans des livres a pour but d'inventer et de reconstruire une ville fictive, un lieu universel, qui se manifeste sous forme d'installation, de montage cinématographique et sous une forme libre de livre. Une approche et un processus fragmentaires où des extraits de textes et d'images, les ébauches et l'inachevé, me mettent au défi, tout comme le spectateur, d'associer, d'assembler et de combler les lacunes. Une nouvelle étape dans le développement de cette installation sera présentée à la Cantonale de Thoune en décembre.
A conversation between Jan Verwoert and Matheline Marmy, talking about recent works.
JV: Are we running?
MM: Yep.
JV: We are in the exhibition space, what are we looking at?
MM: So we are looking at pieces made out of a certain kind of plastic which is a copolyester. It’s something that I could form as the melting point is super low, so I could work on it with a simple heat gun and then construct it in a very empirical way, both of them. They unfold from previous research on containers for water. They are basically the follow-up of this research of how to create a container for experiments that I’ve been working on previously. These were experiments around rusting elements and into small transformations that happen autonomously under certain conditions.
JV: So on the inside we have certain substances that are exposed to water and then the chemicals cause the rusting. Or what happens on the inside?
MM: Basically yes, this is it. Right now, they are not fully activated so some of the small canals or veins, however you would like to call them, contain only water, or water and salt. Where the reaction is actually happening, there’s a copper wire that I dismantled from an electric cable and the reaction is happening with an acid, salt and water that were poured into this tube. And yeah, the process simply continues to happen. So at first it takes an hour or two to take a slightly darker color and then the blue appears. And now there is also black happening inside. So I don’t really know how it will unfold.
JV: What we are witnessing is a chemical reaction in real-time?
MM: Yes, and also as I said previously, some of the tubes or veins will be activated at the beginning of the exhibition and some will dry during the exhibition due to the evaporation.
JV: And this work has evolved from another body of works where you were working with algae on photosensitive paper.
MM: I would say it was maybe another thread of the same kind of ideas. Last year I was working on this algae-based emulsion that was itself coming from a more photographic process. I stopped trying to obtain images coming from that kind of constellation and I became more interested in the algae itself, what it was bringing as a sphere of reflection and in terms of resonances.
JV: But also, what we were witnessing there was a real-time process because the algae all the time were changing color as they were interacting with the light.
MM: Yeah, exactly so that algae basically contain a high level of green pigmentation and like every kind of natural pigment, it is supersensitive to UV, right? Sunlight. And what I’ve done with this series of work was to cover a surface with an emulsion made of this algae and then I choose not to fix them or protect them as a final stage of what could be a photograph or a photographic process. So in this way they still potentially react if shown in space or are shown to the sunlight by slightly fading and changing color. Actually it’s not algae but cyanobacteria. Maybe I need to be precise, so it’s a unicellular bacteria. So the one I worked with had a high range of green and also a range of blue. So what happens is that the green tends to disappear before the blue. The timing now is slightly different. And also what is different with the plastic work, is that it doesn’t fade away, it is more that there is this oxidation layer that appears on the wire. So it’s something that grows rather than something that fades. So maybe there is a small inversion here in terms of how the works parallel each other.
JV: In both cases this stuff is alive, in a way. Like the bacteria are alive in the same way that the metal in the oxidation is somehow a live process.
MM: I’m interested into provoking a sort of feeling that something could eventually be alive or whatever you mean by this, well active in a sense at least. And also the fading of the bacteria’s and the apparition of the copper rust, are depending on their own time lapse, so I think this is something important. The apparition of the oxidation and how it continues to grow or stops at some point is something that is actually independent from any timing decision of mine.
JV: I remember you started working in photography and went for photography in installation and you once wrote that in this transition, you were interested in finding these pockets of time. A work that could be its own pocket of time and now it feels like time is almost breaking out of the pocket.
MM: That’s an interesting idea. I’ve read something somewhere I think in a book of Timothy Morton that things can emit time and I’m very interested in this idea, because somehow it gives a possibility for a material experiment that is also very simple like rust appearing on the surface, to be observed through another kind of lens. All the works that I’ve done, had either an interest in time, in the sense that time is maybe not a tool but a piston, in addition with a main provocative element such as water here.
JV: It’s a powerful thing to say that these elements don’t exist in time but they emit time, they create, time is emerging from them, it’s copper time and algae time.
MM: I hope that this is something that eventually we can grasp from the work so that they study their own form of evolution, and once provoked by me, the solution can just appear in the space. And I also think that the possibility that the work can emit a form of time just gives it its autonomy in an exhibition space, or in constellation with others.
JV: It’s life other than we know, and that is a state of autonomy I guess. But you once said these memorable things regarding the collaboration with a material both in relation to the bacteria now and in relation to water that you admitted that you had chosen to work with an uncooperative element or uncooperative agent I think you said.
MM: (Laughs)
JV: On one hand you evoke the economy of something that is emitting its own time. On the other hand we have a trans-human collaboration where the human agent has chosen to collaborate with an uncooperative agent because the water goes wherever it wants to go and bacteria goes wherever they want to go. So after working with these uncooperative agents for a sustained amount of time, what’s your experience?
MM: I think that I have learnt a lot about how to work with these materials and every time working with a new material requires a certain amount of experience before being able to find a way in its qualities, somehow. As I said that those two pieces were made in a super empirical way and it happens that it breaks, and it happens that it leaks, and I also have to deal with that and try to find working tools. It’s very much a matter of fact, how to deal with things. For me it has been as much as we talked about this philosophical ideas of how to work with the agency of materials, and try to deal with that, it also has been super down-to-earth to try to achieve this and find solutions to actually make it happen. I would say that there is also a romantic idea of how to work with water as an element, a change provoking element, but also it has been very much concrete decisions.
JV: I keep thinking how did the farmers relate to the changing seasons when I assume a lot of things that you said would relate to your art practice but traditionally it would've also related to people farming.
MM: Yeah, maybe, because when you’re into it it’s a lot about how to find the right plastic, making tests that week and then you have to find another way. Remember the time you came into my studio and I filled the first bag with water and it broke at that point. Art to me is also every time about how to find solutions to these small problems.
JV: While there is this wider horizon of understanding the elements that you’ve chosen to interact with.
MM: Yes, I think this cooperation or this comprehension or incomprehension of an element comes just for me from the making, and then with a little bit of distance, there is another level of dialogue with it.
Avez-vous un jour rêvé de fêter la nouvelle année au musée ? Pour le passage à l’an 2000, se fût chose faite au Faubourg du Lac 71-73. Le Photoforum Pasquart et Centre d’Art Pasquart inauguraient leur « cube de béton » sur fond de champagne et cotillons, après 2 ans de travaux de rénovation.
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Haben Sie jemals davon geträumt, das neue Jahr im Museum zu feiern? Der Jahreswechsel zum 2000 wurde in der Seevorstadt 71-73 gefeiert. Das Photoforum Pasquart und das Kunsthaus Pasquart haben nach zweijährigen Renovierungsarbeiten ihren «Betonwürfel» mit Champagner und Konfetti eingeweiht.
Le Matin, 4.1.2000, n°4, p.14
Dès l’inauguration, la presse salue le concept architectural qui allie l’ancien bâtiment et sa nouvelle extension, une occasion pour revenir sur l’histoire du Pasquart.
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Seit der Einweihung begrüsst die Presse das architektonische Konzept, das den Altbau mit dem neuen Anbau verbindet und Gelegenheit bietet, auf die Geschichte des Pasquart zurückzublicken.
24 Heures, 12.1.2000, n°9, p.20
Une année après l’inauguration du nouveau bâtiment, 2001 débute avec l’exposition « Feux biennois » de Francis Boillat
« Feu » est la dénomination ancienne de foyer, lieu habité par une ou plusieurs personnes. Autrefois le « feu » constituait l’unité de recensement de la population.
Depuis 1995 j’ai récolté des photographies de « Feux » d’aujourd’hui, simplement ceux de connaissances et amis biennois qui ont bien voulu participer à ce projet. Les auteurs des « Feux biennois » sont toutes ces personnes qui ont fait un don d’une image d’eux et d’un lieu qu’ils ont choisi dans leur appartement. « Feu » par « feu » ces Biennoises et Biennois sont venus créer leur image sous la lumière des flahs dans le studio photo. Ils ont fait don ensuite d’un endroit de chez eux, éclairé tel quel, de jour ou de nuit. Ces images ne sont pas à vendre, chaque feu a reçu la sienne et la ville les gardera toutes en mémoire.
Un grand merci à toutes celles et ceux qui ont participé à ce projet.
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Ein Jahr nach der Einweihung des neuen Gebäudes, beginnt 2001 mit der Ausstellung «Feux biennois» von Francis Boillat
«Feu» ist der alte französische Ausdruck für Herd, ein von einer oder mehreren Personen bewohnter Ort. Früher war der «Herd» die Volkszählungseinheit.
Seit 1995 habe ich Fotografien von heutigen «Feux» gesammelt, von Bekannten und Freunden, die einverstanden waren, an diesem Projekt teilzunehmen. Die Autoren der «Feux biennois» sind alle diese Leute, die ein Bild von sich selbst und von einem ausgewählten Raum ihrer Wohnung geschenkt haben. «Feu» nach «Feu» sind diese Bielerinnen und Bieler ins Studio gekommen, um unter Blitzlicht ihr eigenes Bild zu gestalten. Dann haben sie einen Raum ihres Heimes gescheckt, so beleuchtet wie er war, am Tag oder am Nacht. Diese Bilder sind nicht zu verkaufen. Jeder «Feu» hat sein eigenes bekommen, und die Stadt wird sie alle in Erinnerung behalten.
Allen, die an diesem Projekt teilgenommen haben, danke ich bestens.
Le Photoforum Pasquart fête ses 35 ans cette année! A cette occasion on vous propose un voyage dans le temps, au travers de différents médias, pour revenir sur les moments forts de la galerie. Coupures de presse, photographies conservées au Photoforum, reliques de l’ancien site internet, le Photoforum met ses archives au grand jour sur sa plateforme FLARE !
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Das Photoforum Pasquart feiert in diesem Jahr sein 35-jähriges Bestehen! Bei dieser Gelegenheit bieten wir Ihnen eine Reise in die Vergangenheit, durch verschiedene Medien, um die Highlights des Photoforums zu entdecken. Presseausschnitte, Fotos aus unseren Ablagen, Relikte der alten Website: das Photoforum bringt sein Archiv auf seiner Plattform FLARE ans Licht!
Solène Gün (*1996) a reçu le Prix Photoforum, doté de 5′000 CHF, pour son travail intitulé Turunç (Bitter Orange). Il s’agit d’une immersion dans le quotidien de jeunes hommes issus de l’immigration turque dans les banlieues berlinoises et parisiennes, qui a séduit le jury par son écriture photographique forte et singulière.
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Der mit 5′000 CHF dotierte Prix Photoforum ging dieses Jahr an Solène Gün (*1996). Ihr Projekt Turunç (Bitter Orange) taucht in den Alltag junger, aus der Türkei emigrierter Männer ein, die in den Vorstädten Berlins und Paris leben, in denen die Fotografin selbst auch einen Teil ihrer Kindheit verbracht hat. Die Jury war von der starken und einzigartigen Bildsprache sowie der Subtilität und Komplexität ihrer Annäherung an ein üblicherweise von Gewalt und stereotypen Darstellungen gezeichneten Thema überzeugt.
