Alpina Huus, Arsenic

Arsenic, Center for Contemporary Performing Arts, January 2018

Alex Baczynski-Jenkins, Donatella Bernardi, Circumstances, Maud Constantin, Gina Folly, Lou Forster, Selina Grüter, Michèle Graf, Balz Isler, Leo, Miriam Laura Leonardi, Renée Levi, Hanne Lippard, Sarah Margnetti, Chus Martínez, Josep Maynou, Guy Meldem, Adrien Missika, Julie Monot, Garrett Nelson, Colin Raynal, Niels Trannois, Melissa Tun Tun, Alvaro Urbano, Yanling and Asian Eyez.

Initiated in March 2015 at the Schinkel Pavillon in Berlin, Alpina Huus is a project by Elise Lammer and Denis Pernet that considers performance and domestic space. Whether in painting, literature, or philosophy, the house is often used as a metaphor for the human figure, and alludes to the many analogies between the house, and the body and psyche. In a domestic space, each room covers a specific typology, from the living room and kitchen to the bathroom and bedroom, to which human behaviour adapts or resists.

During two festivals, in Geneva in December 2017 and Lausanne in January 2018, 34 Swiss and international artists thread and unthread—sometimes simultaneously—multiple narratives that further explore ideas around community practice, and an understanding of the domestic environment as a stage where meaningful artistic conversations can and do take place. Among an audience that never knows what is to be considered as staged or not, the difference between a spectacle and the typical course of an art gathering is blurred, pushing the limits of, and sometimes overlapping, private and public spheres.

The exhibition allows visitors to see the elements created by the artists to establish the domestic space: seats, a bar, audio loud speakers system, a wall painting and several objets that performer used. The boundary between useful objet and sculpture blurs.

The symposium gathers international specialists of exhibition making and performance for a debate. What are the possible new forms of context of presentation for performance art in art institution and outside.

Curated by Elise Lammer and Denis Pernet
Photography: Maxime Genoud, Patrick de Rham