The François Schneider Foundation invites L'Ososphère (1) to invent a fluid, choral conversation between digital and water. Immersed in this place of art nestled in water, at the foot of the Vosges mountains, the journey multiplies the correspondences between digital and watery matter but also the common causes engaged by a poetic relationship to the world. The works of art take on the figure of the fountain or that of the basin, to thwart them the next moment and invent other water objects signed by the time. Beyond its symbolic charges, water is sometimes invested here as an activator of the narrative, other times it is called upon for its plastic stakes, or even as a fully-fledged element of the device. From 28 October 2018 to 13 January 2019, as part of a creative residency project in partnership with the Région Grand Est, the visual artist Étienne Rey is creating "Turbulences", an immersive in-situ, sensory and grandiose installation that recreates a universal poetic experience, that of abandoning the contemplation of the play of light on water. Echoing the work of Etienne Rey, a dozen artists have been invited to present digital art in all its forms: video installation, mechanical device, mapping, algorithm basins, present among others lake landscapes, frozen tears, sculpted waves.
À Waterproof, digital technology explores its turbulence as well as its evaporations, flows and stagnations, plays on the process of the wave as well as that of the drop by drop to stretch out a two-sided mirror inspired by this infinite number of possibilities within reach. The work Turbulences by Étienne Rey was created for the François Schneider Foundation as part of a long-term project supported by the Région Grand Est, the Foundation and carried by L'Ososphère, of which the artist is a member. This work integrates "turbulence and flow as "engines" of the plastic device, generating within the installation an activity based on principles of fluid mechanics and plays on their unpredictable nature".
List of artists : Herman Kolgen, Stéphane Kozik, Pe Lang, Joanie Lemercier, Tristan Ménez, Jacques Perconte, Laurent Pernot, étienne Rey, Gaëtan Robillard, Urbrain, Pierce Warnecke.
Etienne Rey, Turbulences, 2018
A large fluid volume overhangs us. A volume whose perception would be close to that of a large mass of water suspended in space. The volume appears as a "ghost", resulting from a physical presence close to the immaterial. As constrained in its verticality, it is, moreover, animated within it by disturbances, turbulence, reflections, characteristic of the effects of light in contact with moving water. In Turbulences, Étienne Rey engages the narrative in his plastic gesture. As if in a less and less improbable anticipation, he summons digital writing and machinery to recreate a universal poetic experience, as much intimate as it is situated, that of abandoning contemplation of the play of light on water. A gentle and desperate gesture by an artist to safeguard an emotion that could disappear with the evaporation of the natural conditions that offer it to us. Original creation for the François Schneider Foundation. In partnership and with the support of the François Schneider Foundation, with the support of the Région Grand Est. Artistic direction, production, diffusion: Quatre 4.0 / L'Ososphère.
Etienne Rey's work explores the very notion of space. The challenge is to produce shifts in perception. The question of place and environment, in situ and architecture, all contribute to the discovery of spatial structures through displacement and the multiplication of points of view. The various installations have in common the fact that they invite to experiments made up of material and immaterial, energies and attractions that bring into play physical phenomena whose main vector is light. Reflexive transformations take place between perception, specific to each person, and awareness of the impact of our presence. The intention is to produce experiences of space. The pieces reveal the way in which the latter is structured. Between immaterial installations made of mist and light and those using materials with optical properties, all the works elaborate perceptive filters of the environment leading us to question our relationship to reality. Artist's website : www.ondesparalleles.org
Herman Kolgen, Liquid Memory
Mémoire liquide is a photographic installation in which the photographic images are presented to us half suspended in space, then partially deposited in basins. Here time acts on the work: in contact with the water, the images end up altering, the paper dissolves until it becomes pulp again and eventually breaks. Like a memory that is erased and transformed over time, the photographs - themselves samples of the past - will subtly absorb the effect of the duration of the exhibition in their very materiality. To these images is added a sound dimension that plunges us into unknown territories, those that we each retain within ourselves. Memory finds a guiding thread in the choral composition of humanities that are thus put to the test.
Multidisciplinary artist recognized for more than twenty years for his creations in digital arts, Herman Kolgen lives and works in Montreal. A true audiokinetic sculptor, he draws his primary material from the intimate relationship between sound and image. Kolgen works to create objects that take the form of installations, video and film works, performances and sound sculptures. In constant exploration, he works at the crossroads of different media, elaborating a new technical language and a singular aesthetic. Herman Kolgen's works have been presented at the Venice Biennale, Ars Electronica, Transmediale Berlin, ISEA, Centre Georges Pompidou, Cimatics, Dissonanze, Mutek, Elektra, Sonar, Tapei Digital Arts, Shanghai E-Arts, among others. He has also performed with the Ensemble Intercontemporain de Paris and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Herman Kolgen is the recipient of several prestigious awards including Ars Electronica, Qwartz, Best Experimental Film Award at the Independent Film Festival of New York and Los Angeles. From 1996 to 2008, he devoted most of his time to the duo skoltz_kolgen. Artist's website : www.kolgen.net
Stéphane Kozik, Water from Comets, 2014
In this multidisciplinary installation, water, disturbed by a cloud of white paint, becomes a screen on which a video of moving liquids is projected. At the bottom of the basin, motors and pumps "activate" the water in order to find its living behaviours in interaction with the sound composition diffused by six loudspeakers. The elements of the device are synchronized in order to create from this water, a new material both living and unreal, a sort of placenta that bubbles, rumbles and smokes. The figure of the basin thus collides with both the screen and the aquarium, in an artistic gesture "from the water" that seeks to capture something of the metaphysics of the water to produce an open narrative. Video technique : Stéphane Kozik, Mediafaz Water from Comets is the winner of the ESH project in partnership with the Phénix, transcultures and Art Zoyd.
Stéphane Kozik is an artist, sound artist and musician graduated from the ARTS2 visual arts school in Mons (Belgium). He works mainly on interactive installations, audiovisual and musical performances, short films... His approach is multidisciplinary, sensitive, sensory, poetic and playful. In his works, he apprehends reality in a supernatural way, often by putting it in vibration, resonance, harmony, dissonance, rhythm... Whether in the form of performances, installations or videos, he creates and transforms spaces to question our relationship to the world. Artist's website : www.stephanekozik.be
Pe Lang, Positioning systems VI, 2013
Immobile despite the appearance of its mechanisms, the work is only activated once or twice a day, the time it takes to perfectly align drops of water on a support with a hydrophobic texture. Tiny spheres just waiting for the inevitable evaporation, the drops are at the heart of a process of which nothing remains and which only a scientific photograph would be able to perpetuate. Decontextualized from any industrial environment that might justify its design, the device engages water in a poetic watchmaking poetry, marking by its very nature an elastic relationship to time in a digital world drunk with its own synchronized precision.
Born in 1974 in Switzerland where, after several years spent in Berlin, he returned to set up his studio near Zurich, trained in electronics and computer programming and naturally integrating technology into his work, Pe Lang is one of the most promising and accomplished artists of the new generation of constructive abstraction. Often regarded as the rising star of a certain Swiss conception of concrete art that favours perfect geometrical construction and impeccable execution, Pe Lang builds an exemplary artistic path, from experimental music to the creation of kinetic works that bring into play physical phenomena - the attraction/repulsion of magnetism, the diffraction of light, the cascading effects of gravitation, friction or the collision of elements - with an elegance that is always mysterious and captivating. The numerous awards he has received over the past fifteen years for his sound installations and performances at festivals in Europe, the United States and Asia, the prizes and artistic awards he has received and the exhibitions he has had in contemporary art institutions are evidence of the unanimous international recognition that is beginning to crown his work. Artist's website : www.pelang.ch
Joanie Lemercier, Fuji, 2014
Joanie Lemercier defines a pattern that he relates to a space. Design is that of physical, geometric, organic, natural or landscape structures. Created in Japan in August 2014, in Takamatsu, Fuji is inspired by The Tale of Princess Kaguya (Kaguyahime no monogatari) and is part of a series on volcanoes. The landscape of Mount Fujiyama is drawn in a very large format on which a projection of light will guide our perception of reality, playing with dramatic intensity through a play of verticalities and fluidity, including stormy climaxes. Design and visuals: Joanie Lemercier Original music: Paul Jebanasam Production: Juliette Bibasse.
Joanie Lemercier is a French artist whose work explores the influence of projected light on our visual perception. His universe revolves around geometric forms, motifs and minimal compositions. Joanie Lemercier has been using projection since 2006 and co-founded the visual label AntiVJ in 2008. In 2013, he founded his own studio where he develops installations, pieces and experiments using light. Artist's website : www.joanielemercier.com
Tristan Ménez, Bloom, 2018
The water is vibrated by means of a loudspeaker diffusing infra-basses. Coupled with a stroboscopic system, the installation freezes the flow of water in a sculptural mechanics that is part of the hypnotic experience of the fountain. Suspension of water drops, slowdowns and other optical phenomena, Bloom makes unreal movements visible in a visual experience that plays with our fascination for the figures of the water game. What the spectator sees is intimately linked to what he hears. Modulations of sound frequencies and amplitudes cause transformations of the moving water sculpture. Co-production: Le Bon Accueil - Lieu d'arts sonores - Rennes This project received a grant from Rennes Métropole.
Visual artist, coder and composer of electronic music, Tristan Ménez lives and works in Rennes.
Jacques Perconte, Fécamp-Fagnet (Haute-Normandie), 2017
Fécamp-Fagnet is an infinite film, part of a series focusing on Upper Normandy - a remarkable land of water. This generative video is a succession of dancing compressions of video data edited on the fly. The emotion of the gaze overflows the medium that shows it and, reinventing the painter's gesture, calls upon the pointillist pixel that alters the image to embody the splendour of a memory of a sunny swell. The gaze drowns in it, troubled to find in a renewed emotion this experience of water which holds from contemplation and point of view, from painting and cinema, from relationship to nature and to the digital matrix.
A major figure of the digital art scene and of the French film avant-garde since the end of the 1990s, Jacques Perconte defines himself as a visual artist. His work focuses on landscape, declining linear film for the cinema and generative film for the exhibition, audiovisual performance, photography and installation, and consists of re-capturing nature, particularly in the cultural and technical relationship we build with it. Jacques Perconte's works navigate between cinema and exhibition halls. In addition to the annual exhibitions at the Galerie Charlot in Paris, there are two major solo exhibitions in 2014, at the Prieuré Saint-Pierre in Pont-Saint-Esprit and at the Collège des Bernardins in Paris, which enabled a wide audience to discover his video installation work. In 2013, the Côté Court festival will devote its panorama to him and retrace a reading of his filmography through 26 pieces. David Lynch's very select and secret club, the Silencio in Paris, is devoting a programme of around ten films to him in April 2014. After giving him two carte blanche in 2011, the Cinémathèque française is dedicating to his work the cycle of avant-gardes from December 2014 to February 2015 under the title Soleils. In 2015, the 25th edition of the Mostra Invideo in Milan will focus on his work. Artist's website : www.jacquesperconte.com
Laurent Pernot, Tenir La Mer, 2015
In a "as its title indicates", Tenir La Mer is a sculpture that our generations could leave to future generations for lack of being able to transmit its subject in the full poetics that we have inherited.
A graduate of the University of Paris VIII and Le Fresnoy, Laurent Pernot has been shaping a polymorphic work for the past ten years through different media: video, installation, photography, light and sculpture. His poetics explores memory through the experience of the flow of time, the impermanence of things, the visible and the invisible made perceptible through a certain use of materials, light, image and movement. Both familiar and thwarting appearances, his works often manifest themselves in a suspended time beyond news and chronologies, summoning stories and representations of the world that cross space and centuries, looking at the interactions between man and nature. Impregnated with a melancholic softness that reveals the potential for loss or disappearance, his work thus induces the sensation of a floating world whose fragility threatens us. Site of the artist : www.laurentpernot.net/fr
Urbrain, Latent Image, 2015
In his artistic practice, Urbrain pursues a quest: to separate the image from its support, computer screen, video projections or slide shows. This is how he has crossed the research of LABo des Fées, animated by Erik Lorré, who also explores these different supports through visual and sound programming in real time synchronized with computer-controlled physical actions. By combining their respective researches and their universes, these two artists explore here the technique of image projection on water droplets. In Image Latente, water offers its materiality and poetics to the writing of an immersive and interactive environment to create an object that composes with light in a plastic levitation and unreal moments. Alexandre Urbrain in collaboration with Erik Lorré Music: Ôtanô Co-production: Fées D'hiver.
Urbrain has been making ephemeral video installations for many years in multiple stage configurations. During the glory hours of raves, he projects his mix of images in a multitude of clearings, disused hangars and catacombs. His installations have gradually been integrated into galleries (Arslonga, Paris), prestigious showrooms (Passementerie Declercq, Paris), major French heritage sites (Carolingian crypt of Flavigny sur Ozerain) and audiovisual festivals (Vision'R, Paris - Plages Électroniques, Cannes - Souterrain porte VI, Nancy). Accompanied by Philô, Urbrain presented the Cocon project, a dome of visual, auditory, olfactory and mechanical stimuli in which spectators are invited to lie down. He animates his visual creations in real time, revealing a graphic universe that is pure, dark and eminently contemporary. Artist's website : www.labo.feesdhiver.fr
Gaëtan Robillard, Searching for the Wave, 2013
The installation transposes the shoreline of an island to the heart of the exhibition and it is the story of the wave, its scenario, that Gaëtan Robillard tries to retranscribe here by means of a digital device. In the centre is projected a mathematical ocean that confronts the rock. The domain is made up of millions of particles, whose movement is calculated image after image by a software process. The camera goes through the geometry of the island. Later, a voice emanates and studies the landscape. It questions the transport and shape of the wave. Residual objects and equations are put back on the wall. If the scriptwriting of nature and numerical calculation compose the sequence, other modes of relation to the motif succeed the film. Gaëtan Robillard's work here confronts, through his models, the mathematisation of the world and the desire for freedom embodied in the singular island situation. Production: Le Fresnoy Partners: Paul Painlevé Mathematics Laboratory, University of Lille 1, and EPI SIMPAF Inria Lille Nord Europe.
A graduate of Le Fresnoy - Studio national des arts contemporains, Gaëtan Robillard is a doctoral researcher at the University of Paris 8 and a member of the Laboratory of Intuitions at ESBA TALM Tours. In his artistic approach, he is particularly interested in the language of algorithms and the creation of scenarios, images and installations in which the spatial experience plays an important role. The sciences or industrial techniques are part of his work as starting points for the elaboration of a reflection on history and the environment. He founded the name Tabouret Studio, an entity through which he produces animated films, together with other artists and directors. Artist's website : www.mobitool.free.fr
Pierce Warnecke, Data Decay, 2009 (revisited in 2018)
Data Decay is an audiovisual data visualization installation. From databases related to water and its local sources, sounds and geometric shapes, as simple as possible, are automatically generated. No external audio or video tracks are used, everything comes from the data. For this version, Pierce Warnecke digs into the fluid deposits of the Open Data to show and hear a representation of the data setting of the Rhine and the presence of water in the mechanics of the world.
Pierce Warnecke is a Franco-American multidisciplinary and transmedia artist. Between video art and music, his work explores combinations of synthetic sounds, electronic interference and object manipulation. Artist's website : www.piercewarnecke.com
- Revealing many places in the city through "in situ" events, L'Ososphère unfolds over time and in the urban space of Strasbourg (but also elsewhere and in a network), with electronic nights and concerts, exhibitions and art tours, concerts, sound cruises, workshops, public conversations, radio and publishing. Since 2011, L'Ososphère has been augmented by programme lines (Pop Up District and Cafés Conversatoires) that activate places and situations, often by invitation. In 2015, L'Ososphère is producing an event entitled "Winter Garden" on the Central Campus at the invitation of the University of Strasbourg. In 2017, L'Ososphère will return to live on the La Coop site for the last time before it is transformed into a unique public space, for an exceptional event that, in 10 days, will bring together 42,000 people (29,000 visitors and 13,000 dancers) and 122 artists. 2019 will be the year of its next edition. The Ososphère is now a biennial event. The Ososphere also includes a platform for the creation and production of artistic and cultural projects, broadcast during its public times.
THE FRANÇOIS SCHNEIDER FOUNDATION
A philanthropic foundation created in 2000 and recognised as a public utility in 2005, the François Schneider Foundation pursues a dual commitment to education and culture. It enables high school students to access higher education through scholarships and supports contemporary artists in the development of their careers. The Foundation, headed by Marie Terrieux, encourages creation through various initiatives dedicated to the theme of water, including an international competition, the acquisition of works for its collection and the organisation of thematic exhibitions in its contemporary art centre and sculpture garden. It complements its action through publications, loans, travelling exhibitions and a residency programme for young artists from schools along the Rhine. Situated on the banks of the Rhine, which stretches from Switzerland to the Netherlands via France and Germany, the François Schneider Foundation places interculturality at the centre of its programming and contributes to fostering rich exchanges between artists and the populations of these different territories.
Location François Schneider Foundation - 27 rue de la Première Armée - 68700 Wattwiller - France
UPCOMING APPOINTMENTS
Digital Night: Friday 16 November, guided tour at 6.30 pm and night until 8 pm
Guided tour and family workshop "Light painting": Sunday 2 December, 2 - 5 pm
Digital night: Friday 14 December, guided tour at 6.30 pm and night until 8 pm
Guided tour: Sunday 6 January, 11am
Sound workshop "Plic, plic et clictis" with Hermance Vasolida: Saturday 12 January, 3 pm - 5 pm
