Rebecca Kressley (US, 1981)
Residency period: August – December 2021
rebeccakressley.com
During her residency at La Becque, she focused on a project called Combers, which is still a work-in-progress. The project places the geological evidence of a tsunami in 563 AD on the Leman Lake in parallel with research into incoherence, communication, empathy and crisis. This parallel informs the project’s attempts to untangle, through subjective points of access, where and how normative structures are articulated during disasters and their aftermaths. The residency’s location and support allowed the project to realise its initial goals; namely, to create a site-specific abstraction of documentation in aesthetic practices and evolving research, and to celebrate spontaneous, collaborative methods.
Combers expanded through collaboration and exchange with other artists, writers, researchers and scientists, some being Kressley’s co-residents at La Becque. The whole process is documented on an evolving archival website. The project took shape in multiple drawings and texts that are the basis for a video installation entitled La Suche. Through extensive field recordings and experiments in the sound studio of La Becque, she created sound works that comprise a multi-channel sound installation. New research and work with resonating structures began with a sound installation she created for Open Studios in the Chalet, with a lot of help from Pyloo. In addition, she participated in Le Geste Funambule at Eklekto, Geneva, where she created a composition with percussionists that continues to develop into a larger collaborative piece.
A graduate from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Slade School of Fine Art in London, Rebecca Kressley (born 1981) is an Amsterdam-based artist and researcher. Her practice, which includes audio composition and various visual mediums, draws from historised episodes that shape present biopolitical circumstances. Her research seeks to find out how and when structures that are now visible and considered indisputable come into being, and whether their ambivalence can be retroactively returned to these starting points.