Amar Kanwar (New Delhi, 1964)
On Sunday, 3 April 2022 at 14h, a one-hour guided tour with an English-speaking guide will be organized at the Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts Lausanne. The price of this visit is CHF 20.- per person. It’s actually the entrance fee to the temporary exhibition, the guided tour is free of charge. The entrance is free of charge with a museum pass, Raiffeisen card, Swiss travel pass.
More information on the guided tour and booking: www.mcba.ch/agenda/guided-tour-resister-encore-in-english/
Résister, encore
The Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts is currently hosting an exhibit entitled: Résister, encore. This collective show portrays various forms of resistance that artists have developed when faced with the great challenges of our age – those forms amount to survival strategies. As we are currently aware of the tensions around the world, especially those happening in Ukraine, we are reminded how important it is to "not forget". These artists, also known as Resistant Artists, are so important for the memories of wartime to not be forgotten.
This group show, the last to be curated by Bernard Fibicher before he steps down as director in June, illustrates the forms of resistance (withdrawal, silence, resilience, outcry, indignation, protestation, action, refection, satire) that artists have developed when faced with the great challenges of our age. Those forms amount to survival strategies.
Bernard Fibicher explains, "Art, culture in general has always been a force of resistance in building an alternative world. To think, to find a way to act differently means not being satisfied with what already exists. All of the forms of resistance we’ve seen in the world over the past 10 years (the Yellow Vests, #MeToo, Black Lives Matter, the Umbrella Revolution…) and the growing number of people who are rebelling through speech and action
against all kinds of “systems” have reinforced in my mind the idea that we need to highlight art’s exemplary role as the training ground for devising and lending concrete form to ways of resisting."
One of the best artists from Switzerland has to be Markus Raetz (Bern Switzerland 1941-2020). Language is one of three parameters in the art in his repertoir. In Geneva, the sculpture OUI NON amazes passers by if they dare to look up at the Place du Rhône! Read our article from 2020 at this link. Markus Raetz works on the real and unreal of the negative/positive and the perception and the deformation on shapes in a mirror or facing each other. He invites the viewer to interact, because many works by the artist reveal themselves only by the movement of the viewer in front of the sculpture.
As the Fondation Jan Michalski in Vaud is hosting a wonderful exhibition around Markus Raetz through 10 July this year, this is the time to visit this wonderful museum/library/architecture. A pair of entrance tickets is up for grabs in our competition (below).
Markus Raetz's works with sizing up words and letters, pushing them further, exploring their interconnections within several languages, and embodying them in eloquent visual forms – eloquent, too, in the etymological sense of “speaking out.” In this brilliant artist’s output, language is a singular source of inspiration as well as matter for an inventiveness that is bound up with both its translation into images and Raetz’s craftsmanship, the other two elements are at the core of his body of work.
Raetz’s reflection on words and language generally is both playful and systematic, deep and done with a twinkle in the artist’s eye, personal and implying the participation of others. As the viewer looks on, one and the same stationary object embodies a no and a yes; seen from the left and the right (see poster below), a little brass object collectively exclaims AHA; the ich (I) at the head of a body floating in space is transformed into a wir (we) at the other end. This message counts in the artist’s thinking. He emphasizes exchange and sharing. Time to fire up our imagination! “One’s own movement is important. I give the viewer responsibility – or free play, room to manoeuver. I want to give them certainty, like a fine instrument,” the artist once declared.
Press release 25.03.2022
More than CHF 10,000 raised for the response of MSF in Ukraine by walkers on the Sentier des Toblerones
Over the weekend 19-20 March 2022, 73 local residents (and 4 dogs) joined in a collaborative fundraising walk along the symbolic Sentier des Toblerones, raising more than CHF 16,500 (as of 25 March) so far for Médecins Sans Frontières’ unrestricted fund. This money is being used to support their emergency work in Ukraine and neighbouring countries.
Why Médecins Sans Frontières?
From the MSF website: https://www.msf.org/war-ukraine
In late February 2022, attacks by Russian forces on multiple cities in Ukraine have since led over 3 million people to become refugees. As war spreads throughout Ukraine, people are fleeing the country. They are exhausted, scared and many are suffering from dehydration or hypothermia. Our teams in Ukraine have had to suspend our usual medical activities. We are now scaling up our emergency response in Ukraine and in neighbouring countries. In addition to Ukraine, we have teams responding in Poland, Moldova, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Russia and Belarus.
More on the MSF response in each country: https://www.msf.org/msf-response-war-ukraine
Who participated?
Participants were a truly international mix of 73 Swiss residents, originally from Ukraine, Russia, Poland, Hungary, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Portugal, France, UK, Ireland, South Africa, USA, Argentina, Colombia, India, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.
After a 2-year hiatus, The Canettes Blues Band (above) has returned with a new vigor. We caught up with Steve Goldfarb to find out more about this local group.
Steve commented, "The Canettes Blues Band has been entertaining enthusiastic fans in the Geneva area over two Millenia and are still optimistic to make it to a 3rd. The group was founded around 1996. There were no written records, back then, but some ancient carvings found in the CERN Music Club Locale seem to indicate they were already entertaining local parties and festivals back then."
The band members, listed below, all have day jobs (teachers, programmers, bankers, artists, scientists and retirees) and are just as enthusiastic for their alter ego positions in the band. What better way to let off steam and socialize till the cows come home! And that is true for the band members too.
The Canettes honed their talents performing their own special style of “Versoix Delta” blues, with members hailing from Seyssel, Bern and the Pays de Gex. Their repertoire covers a wide variety of blues and R&B favourites, from Muddy Waters to Buddy Guy, Sam & Dave to Mick & Keith, as well as a few of their own unique creations, including the Fuzzy Wuzzy Blues and Sweet Little Barmaid.
The Canettes presented their own ATLAS Boogie to an enthusiastic crowd at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 2013, and have graced (or snuck into) such diverse venues as the slopes of Villars, the Swiss Chalet, the CERN Hardronic Festival, Paddy’s Pub (RIP), Seven Arts, the Mr. Pickwick Pub, The Scene, Auberges des Vergers, and many other venues.
Read down to enter our competition for a pair of tickets for opening night!
The third show of the Confiture Theater Group season, Le Cabaret Médical, is a humorous and musical epic about medicine in French. You will meet caregivers, patients, bacteria, molecules, viruses, bureaucrats and ethicists who will confide to the audience all their secrets and wildest dreams.
Between sketches, songs, choreographies and current events, many themes will be addressed:
Applause from the Balconies
Tribute to the teams applauded during the pandemic.
Contamination
Ballet and song: the virus explains its strategy in a choreography of convolutions based on Tango.
Crisis Management
Administrative and bureaucratic acceleration, emergencies and counter-information have generated a multiplication of zooming sequences, re-focusing and emergency meetings. To the point of absurdity.
Burn Out
The blues of the saturated worker.
Give me a HUG
Distance, greetings, contacts, paranoia, behaviors in complete mutation allow a new way of education and civility.
The Back Office
The classic sequence of criticism of the bureaucratic monster that invades our institutions and our daily life; computers, reception, secretariat, applications and online archiving.
