Despite the innumerable changes to the 2020 cultural calendar, Festival Images Vevey will be held as planned this year, from September 5 to 27. Under the theme “Unexpected. Le hasard des choses”, the visual arts biennial will present around fifty surprising photographic installations throughout the city of Vevey and its surroundings – in particular in our home base, La Tour-de-Peilz.

La Becque is pleased to partner up with the festival and will be hosting installations by Aladin Borioli, a 2019 recipient of the EXECAL Residencies at La Becque and a 2020 “satellite resident”, and by Yann Gross, who is currently spending the summer at the residency to continue his research on plant-based photographic development. Another La Becque alumnus, Duy Hoàng, is also part of the program. His Vestigial Structure project will be visible at the Quai Roussy.

 

 

Aladin Borioli (CH) – RUCHES & AN INTIMACY MACHINE

 

Aladin Borioli’s interest in beehives was passed on to him by his grandfather, a beekeeper. After training in visual arts at ECAL/Ecole cantonale d’art in Lausanne, and in anthropology at the Freie Universität Berlin, since 2014 Aladin has been building up a vast corpus of bee-related photographs, videos, sounds and ethnographic material. He is publishing a book to coincide with Festival Images Vevey, compiling hundreds of archives to present a new history of beehives. This fascinating visual glossary traces the diverse contraptions humans invented for bees between 2400 BCE and 1852, the year the “modern” beehive was patented. Ruches portrays the millennia-old relationship between humans and bees, reminding us of the vital role these insects play in our shared ecosystem. In parallel, Aladin will present a second exhibition at La Becque – this one extracted from his ongoing research project An Intimacy Machine, of which the residency is one of several supporters and anchors.

Ruches was awarded the Nestlé Grand Prix Images Vevey 2019/2020.

 

 

YANN GROSS (CH) & ARGUIÑE ESCANDON (ES) – AYA

 

Yann Gross and Arguiñe Escandón created their Aya project (which means ‘spirit’ in Quechua) based on the work of Charles Kroehle, a 19th-century French-German pioneer in ethnographic photography who, according to popular legend, disappeared in the Peruvian Amazon. The Aya series uses both historical and contemporary images, and was created in the heart of the rainforest, to propose a dialogue between the representation of exoticism and the artists’ sensory impressions from time spent with various indigenous communities. To infuse their photographs with the essence of the jungle, Yann Gross and Arguiñe Escandón printed some of them on the spot, benefitting from the photosensitive properties of exotic plants. As such, the Aya project constitutes the onset of an in-depth research continued by Yann Gross at La Becque, centered on the use of plants in the photographic process.

The exhibition layout and design for the version of Aya shown at La Becque was conceived with RGB Architectes and Emanuel Ris woodworking, Lausanne. With the generous support of the City of Lausanne, Wilde Gallery, G.A.O Constructions Bois and the Casino Barrière Foundation.

Photo credit: Aya, Yann Gross & Arguiñe Escandon

Félicia Atkinson, Adrien Chevalley, Anne-Laure Franchette, Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė, Marie Griesmar, Jailor & Fula, Jean-Yves Le Baron, Jose Cáceres Mardones, Julie Monot, Alessandra Novaga, Florence Peake, Jessy Razafimandimby, Prem Sahib, Rosario Talevi, Time Is Away, Maxine Yolanda.

 

-> FULL PROGRAM HERE!

 

Concieved jointly by Basel-based curator Elise Lammer and La Becque, Modern Nature: An Homage to Derek Jarman is a three-year project which comprises the development of a garden and an artistic programme inspired by the life and work of Derek Jarman. Created especially for Modern Nature, the garden located on the lakeside grounds of La Becque is a tribute to the garden Jarman developed at Prospect Cottage. Far from a perfect copy, La Becque’s Jarman-inspired garden is actually a reinterpretation of the principles that guided him throughout his gardening process, i.e. working with local and native species, creating scenography based on found elements, devising efficient biodynamic arrangements and avoiding walls or fences.

At La Becque the garden acts as a platform for artistic projects by Swiss and international contemporary artists working across the mediums of video, sculpture, performance and music. In late summer 2019 the first selection of living artists were put in dialogue with what was still a sparse garden and a rather minimal research archive. Ranging from people who had worked closely together with Derek Jarman to younger artists whose practice strongly resonated with themes dear to him, the cohort’s connections to Jarman were somewhat intuitive and endorsed the capacity of his legacy to transcend generations and geographies. As a result, this first series of works newly designed or adapted “for” this Swiss version of Prospect Cottage emerged under the overarching theme of “camp”.

Planned as an open-ended process of layering that could evolve over several years, the documented and undocumented synergies taking place between the artists’ contributions and the garden flora is gradually granting the garden its autonomy, eventually embodying what a living archive could be.

Opening on 25, 26, 27 September 2020, the second chapter of Modern Nature will focus on the notion of “queering nature”, unveiling newly-produced sculptures displayed in the garden, as well as readings, film screenings, and various artistic and musical performances. It will also mark the birth of “GARDEN FEELINGS“, a new series of plantophile sonic events conceived by Julie le Gonidec and Philippe Heim, which aim to combine collective listening with natural environment.

 

Modern Nature: an Homage to Derek Jarman, Part Two is supported by the Fondation Casino Barrière, the Department of Cultural Affairs of the City of La Tour-de-Peilz and the Fondation Sandoz.

Photo credit: Modern Nature, Diana Martin(2019)