A presentation of two “Before publications” was organized at the CEC on Thursday, May 25, 2023, in collaboration with Joyfully Waiting, a sound project by Nathalie Rebholz. It brought together Laurence Bonvin (artist, photographer, and filmmaker, born 1967 in Sierre), whose publication, شالي (shali). Before publication 7, was edited in 2022, and Yann Chateigné Tytelman (freelance writer and curator, born 1977 in Brussels) whose publication, Blackout. Before publication 10, was launching on the event. The event created space for discussion about the various themes addressed by the two speakers, in conversation with Véronique Bacchetta. Both talked about the development of his or her “Before publication”, as well as her artistic practice, in the case of Laurence Bonvin, and his curatorial practice, in the case of Yann Chateigné Tytelman.
An interlude by RM, Dirty dirty desire, 2023, track by Pony Pride, released on activeRat, followed the presentation of the two publications. The evening concluded with a listening session of Joyfully Waiting.
Starting in 2019, the CEC launches into the “Before publication” collection. It gathers several authors’ texts or artists’ inserts, which appear regularly and until the final edition of L’Effet papillon, 2008-2024, the second volume of the Centre d’édition contemporaine’s retrospective catalog, L’Effet papillon, 1989-2007 (published in 2008).
Laurence Bonvin, شالي. Before publication 7, 36 pages, ed. of the CEC, 2022
The set of photographs Shali (house in Siwi language) was made in February 2021 – Shali, digital photographs (color originals), inkjet print on Hahnmühle paper, 74.7 x 58 cm, 2021. It’s related to the fortress of the same name, located in the center of the Siwa oasis in Egypt. The construction technique, kershef, is a mixture of clay, salt, and stones. It is exemplary of Berber vernacular architecture and offers a natural protection against the heat of the desert. Severely eroded by time and the torrential rains of 1926, the fortress of Shali has been restored by the Egyptian government who wants to make Siwa an eco-tourism center.
Born in 1967 in Sierre, Laurence Bonvin is a Swiss photographer and film director. She lives between Switzerland and the city of Lisbon. Marked by the documentary, her approach has been focused for many years on landscape, architecture, and the phenomena of transformation of urban and natural environments. Through her gaze, the artist reveals the social, poetic and political dimensions of intermediate places such as borders, wastelands, pre-urban and peri-urban areas, and questions their identities. Her photographic work has been presented in solo exhibitions including: Blackrock, Dak’Art Biennale, Dakar (2022); Earth Beats, Kunsthaus Zürich (2021); See Pieces, Alfred Ehrhardt Foundation, Berlin (2021); Les lois de l’improbabilité, Centre de la photographie, Geneva (2020); Something Else 2, Biennale off, Darb 1789, Cairo (2018); Flow of Forms, Museum of Ethnology, Hamburg (2018). She also participates in the collective exhibition, La montagne en perspective, in the Museum of Art and History, Geneva (2022-23). Laurence Bonvin has directed several short films presented in exhibitions as well as selected by international festivals such as Ghost Fair Trade (2022). She has benefited from a Pro Helvetia Cairo workshop between 2020 and 2021.
Yann Chateigné Tytelman, Blackout. Before publication 10, 44 pages, ed. of the CEC, 2023
“It all started with a letter to my father. It had been about ten years since his death, and I suddenly felt like writing to him about the silence, his silence, the silence between us. It started in 2020, as a necessity. The silence, then, was striking. It resonated with other erased voices, other voids, other emotions. I thought I would not be able to stop. Neither diary, nor essay, nor short story, Blackout is a weaving, a braid made of these lines of silence, and tells, in fragments, the story of a dispossession, of an entry into darkness.”
(Yann Chateigné Tytelman, Blackout. Before publication 10, extract from the colophon)
Yann Chateigné Tytelman is an author and curator living in Brussels. He was an artistic advisor at MORPHO, Antwerp; curator at KANAL – Centre Pompidou, Brussels (2019–2021); head of the Visual Arts Department at HEAD – Geneva (2009-2017) and of the programming at CAPC Museum of contemporary art in Bordeaux (2007–2009). He recently organized Four Sisters (Jewish Museum of Belgium, Brussels, 2023), A Glittering Ruin Sucked Upwards (HISK, Brussels, 2022), Gordon Matta-Clark: Material Thinking (Canadian Center for Architecture, Montreal and Museum der Moderne, Salzburg, 2019-2021) and By repetition, you start noticing details in the landscape (Le Commun, Geneva, 2019). He has contributed to Conceptual Fine Arts, Mousse and Spike and co-edited Almanac Ecart. A collective archive, 1969-2019 (HEAD-Geneva/ art&fiction, 2019).
This project is sponsored by the City of Geneva, and by the Federal Office of Culture and the Republic and the Canton of Geneva.
Born in Los Angeles in 1970, Liz Craft belongs to a generation of artists strongly inspired by the libertarian mindset of the West Coast of the United States and heir of the Flower Power movement of the 1970s and that of sexual activism of the 1980s. In the interview given on the occasion of her exhibition, Ms America, at the CEC, from November 5th, 2022, to February 3rd, 2023, Craft looks back on her life and artist journey with her friend and Geneva gallery owner Paul-Aymar Mourgue d’Algue. Craft discusses in particular the importance and influence on her work of the community of artists and synergies created around projects like Paradise Garage, a small gallery founded with Pentti Monkkonen in the garage of their house in Venice, California. Or the Paramount Ranch art fair that she and Monkkonen set up in 2014 with gallery owners Alex Freedman and Robbie Fitzpatrick, and which established strong connections between Los Angeles and the European art scenes. She also talks about the evolution that took place in her practice which went from a monumental to an artisanal production that is overall freer, such as the Pac-Women, the puppet figures presented at her exhibition at the CEC. Liz Craft & Paul-Aymar Mourgue d’Algue. Conversation is the second video in a series of filmed discussions between artists and figures from the art world involved in the CEC’s programming.
Liz Craft (1970, Los Angeles) lives and works in Berlin. Her exhibitions have included those at the Real Fine Arts Gallery, New York, Truth and Consequences, Geneva, Jenny’s, Los Angeles, and at the Neue Alte Brücke, Frankfurt between 2015 and 2022. Her work has been presented in various solo exhibitions, such as: Me Princess, Kunsthaus Centre d’art Pasquart, Biel (2023); Ms. America, Centre d’édition contemporaine, Geneva (2022); Cavern, Neue Alte Brücke, Frankfurt (2022); Do You Love Me Now ? Kunsthalle und Kunstmuseum, Bremerhaven (2022); Escape From New York, Baby Company, New York (2019); QUERELA, Galeria Zé dos Bois, Lisbon (2019); Watching You Watching Me, Jenny’s Gallery, London (2018). She has also taken part in numerous group exhibitions: Kreislaufprobleme at Croy Nielsen, Vienna (2019), Tranted Loveat Confort Moderne, Poitiers (2018); Sueurs Chaudes at South Way Studio, Marseille (2017); Medusa. Bijoux et tabous at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la ville de Paris, Paris (2017).
Paul-Aymar Mourgue d’Algue (Geneva, 1974) lives and works in New York. He is an independant curator and an art critic.
This project is sponsored by the Federal Office of Culture and the Republic and the Canton of Geneva.
From film to performance, by way of painting, sculpture and installation, Mai-Thu Perret’s multifaceted practice combines modernism, the Arts and Crafts movement and Oriental spiritualities. Her works address various themes ranging from gender issues and radical feminist policies to humans (bodies, sexuality, medical issues), the intimate space (furniture, common objects, decors) and childhood (drawings, games). Her interest in certain craft techniques links Mai-Thu Perret to Matthew Lutz-Kinoy, whose work very freely expresses questions related to bodies, sexuality and gender. In an often autobiographical narrative, the artist expresses his commitment to a more tolerant and less conventional society.
Conversation is an interview between Mai-Thu Perret and Matthew Lutz-Kinoy, the first in a series of filmed discussions which the CEC will produce with artists and other figures from the art world involved in its programming. This interview is an opportunity to look back at the Scrolls in the Wind edition, which Matthew Lutz-Kinoy produced for the Centre in 2018, and the recent exhibition and edition My sister’s hand in mine, which Mai-Thu Perret produced for the Centre in 2022. The interview reveals the complicity between these two artists with unique backgrounds and their shared interest in crafts.
Mai-Thu Perret (1976, Geneva) lives and works in Geneva. Her work has been presented in various solo exhibitions, including Mother Sky at David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles (2023); Real Estate and Untitled at Instituto Svizzero, Rome (2021 and 2022); My sister’s hand in mine at Centre d’édition contemporaine, Geneva (2021). She has also taken part in numerous group exhibitions: Les Flammes at Musée d’art moderne de Paris, Paris (2021); Same things make us laugh, make us cry at Body Archive Project, Zurich (2021).
Matthew Lutz-Kinoy (1984, New York) lives and works between Los Angeles and Paris. His projects have been exhibited in various solo exhibitions such as: Plate is Bed, Plate is Sun, Plate is Circle, Plate is Cycle at Galerie Kamel Mennour, Paris, France (2022); Soap Bubbles at Art Basel Parcours, Basel (2022). He recently took part in the following group exhibitions: River of Rebirth at Z33, Hasselt (2023); Le salon de musique at Kamel Mennour, Paris (2022).
This project is sponsored by the Federal Office of Culture and the Republic and the Canton of Geneva.
Paul Viaccoz,Murs chamaniques. Commentaires, video, 5’41’’, sound, French, 2022
In a back-and-forth between magic and the limits of science, between illusion and reality, Paul Viaccoz’ drawings, murals and object assemblies combine observations, threats and predictions, presenting a simultaneously surreal and horrified vision of the violence and atrocity of the news and its deadly conflagrations: wars, diseases, pandemics.
Recorded in January 2022 in Paul Viaccoz’ studio in Courroux, Murs chamaniques. Commentaires is a kind of extension of the ESPRIT ES-TU LÀ ? exhibition, which took place a few months before at the CEC. In the voice-over, he recounts his spiritual journey to encounter illness and death. The film also presents a visual journey, a tracking shot along a wall of his studio which encompasses the objects, souvenirs and personal mystical experiences that constitute the Murs chamaniques, which the artist has been continuously reconstructing in situ for the past few years. Day after day, he assembles objects taken from nature or from everyday life, souvenirs, fetishes, talismans, which are then juxtaposed or recombined with photographs, drawings, video screenshots, postcards, masks, musical instruments, skulls and crossbones, sabres, dried flowers, feathers, jewellery and pieces of embroidery. This collection of objects, images and texts forms a mural puzzle, reconstructed according to the artist’s moods, reflections and history.
Paul Viaccoz (1953, Saint-Julien-en-Genevois) lives and works in the canton of Jura. His work has been presented in various solo exhibitions, including ESPRIT ES-TU LÀ ? at the Centre d’édition contemporaine, Geneva (2021); La censure des messages at Musée Jurassien des Arts, Moutier (2018). He has also taken part in numerous group exhibitions: Résonnances (2021) and Mystères et frissons (2022), both at Musée Jurassien des Arts, Moutier; Sans titre, entre autres, David Mamie, Xavier Robel and Nicola Todeschini, a look at the FMAC’s collection of drawings at Le Commun, Bâtiment d’art contemporain, Geneva (2019).
This project is sponsored by the Federal Office of Culture and the Republic and the Canton of Geneva.
