Open Studios Fall 2024

For La Becque’s last event of 2024, Colin Self performed a lecture on the invisible arts entitled Voice for a Shadow, interweaving singing and speaking for a secular departure from liturgical forms of relating to the spirit world and the dead community. This lecture also featured acapella versions of songs from their LP, respite ∞ levity for the nameless ghost in crisis.

Francis Whorrall-Campbell presented a series of ceramic sculptures in response to the invitation to ‘open’ one’s studio. These works carried out during their residency at La Becque develop Whorrall-Campbell’s ongoing interest in the matter of the symbolic, and the uses (or abuses) of art.

ECAL resident Sabrina Tarasoff gave a short presentation on the simulation game subculture colloquially known as Roller Coaster Tycoon Sadism, in which virtual passengers are caught in endless traps created by a fanbase of roller-coaster sadists. Following a short screening of selected “sim-sadist ” creations, Tarasoff discussed the hell coaster’s overall propositional mood, poetic potentiality, and transformative influence, as it stresses the significance of the play—at the limits of unreality.

A resident as part of a partnership with EDHEA – The Valais School of Art, Shatha Afify shared a fragment of a new video performance, a work initiated during her residency at La Becque. This performance broadens the conversation on silence, reflecting on punitive silence systems, resilience and collective memory.

The School of Mutants invited the public to join them in their apartment for an aperitif/encounter around cocktails from the “All-World”. The collective also showed the film Mekas-Sembene: Dialogue from the Between Worlds, a fictional encounter between filmmakers Ousmane Sembene and Jonas Mekas, directed by Valérie Osouf and Stéphane Verlet Bottero with Hamedine Kane.

Pauline Boudry & Renate Lorenz presented a rough cut of their film installation Glass Is My Skin, which they shot in their exhibition at the Crystal Palace in Madrid in 2022. Designed specifically for the Crystal Palace, the installation Glass Is My Skin gives the building a voice that speaks about its colonial history and presence, in a song composed and interpreted by the Venezuelan musician Aérea Negrot, who died in 2023, with lyrics that have been written in collaboration with the artists.

Then, Zahrasadat Hakim invited the public to gather in her apartment to share a convivial moment over a meal and activate collective memories through smells, tastes and colors. A place to live, work and reflect, Zahrasadat Hakim’s studio became a place of welcome, care and kindness, offering a warm setting to simply and humbly enjoy the present moment together.

Finally, Cromix Onana from The School of Mutants collective offered a live performance inspired by amapiano, a genre of house music that emerged in South Africa in 2012, accompanied by Shatha Afify and Colin Self.

Download the program