Monday 31 August 2015

Performance Process
To mark its thirtieth anniversary, the Centre Culturel Suisse in Paris has designed an event devoted to performance art, a medium at the intersection of several different disciplines.

Pro Helvetia's Centre Culturel Suisse, situated in the heart of the Marais district in Paris, is celebrating its 30th anniversary.

Federal Counsellor Alain Berset opened the jubilee production "PerformanceProcess", which presents Parisian audiences with highlights of Swiss performance art from the pioneers of the 1960s to the discoveries of today.

The Centre Culturel Suisse (CCS) is the Swiss Arts Council's oldest office abroad.  

Swiss performance: from Jean Tinguely's happenings to the present day
With "PerformanceProcess" the two directors of the CCS in Paris, Jean-Paul Felley and Olivier Kaeser, have developed a new format specifically for the jubilee event, combining exhibition and festival. Overall, 46 Swiss artists and groups from the fields of visual and performing arts will be showing works and documentation connected to performance over the coming three months. The list of participants contains several internationally renowned names, but also offers opportunities for coming across fresh talent. Among those taking part are dancer and choreographer La Ribot, who lives in Geneva, Kassel and Munich based artist Urs Lüthi, originally from Lucerne, and Roman Signer, a blasting artist from Eastern Switzerland. Lesser known names there to be discovered include Martina-Sofie Wildberger, Aldo Walker and Anna Winteler. Twelve art practitioners are provided with a monographic exhibition for a period of five days each. To start off, the series spotlights Jean Tinguely and his auto-destructive machines created in 1960. The spatial design of the rooms at the Paris centre for the "PerformanceProcess" project is a production of the Geneva-based architecture duo "Bureau A". And finally, graphic designer Ludovic Balland from Basel is there to set up an electronic work of reference in real time.

For more information - www.pprocess.ch
Long Night of LiteratureS 2015
An evening of literary encounters in English, Italian, German, Spanish, French, Hungarian and Polish with authors from Switzerland, Austria, France, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Spain, UK and India.

When: 25 September 2015 at 5:30 pm
Where: Instituto Cervantes, 48 Hanuman Road, New Delhi 
Entry by prior registration only 
To register email   longnightlit(at)gmail.com 
Registration from Monday 14 September 2015 to Tuesday 22 September 2015 
The evening will be in English, German, Italian, French, Spanish, Hungarian and Polish.

About the event
An evening of readings, The format encourages audiences to listen to many authors through the course of the evening. Each author reads to an audience of about 12-15 people for 20 minutes. Then the audience moves to the next room to listen to another author. This concept allows the audience close interactions with the authors.

List of participating authors:
Andrea Bianchetti / Switzerland
Aisling Fahey / UK
Asha Miró / Spain
Constantin Simon / France
Danko Rabrenović / Germany
Gábor Lanczkor / Hungary
Josef Haslinger / Austria
Katarzyna Bonda / Poland
Raj Kamal Jha / India

About Andrea Bianchetti / Switzerland
Andrea Bianchetti (1984) lives in Sorengo, Switzerland. He is an Italian literature teacher in High School in Ticino. He started his writing career in 2007 with his first book Sparami! Amore di cera, (Viganello, Alla Chiara Fonte, 2007). Andrea Bianchetti is also editor of the literature magazineCenobio and strictly collaborates with the Swiss Italian Radio (RSI) as commentator of new books. In 2015 he won the Pro-Helvetia prize for his new project entitled Gratosoglio.

Presented in collaboration by Pro Helvetia - Swiss Arts Council, Embassy of Switzerland and other European partners - Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan, German Book Office, Institut Français en Inde, Insituto Cervantes, British Council, Hungarian Information and Cultural Centre, Austrian Cultural Forum and the Polish Institute.

To learn more about the authors click here.
Blackout Basel - September 2015
'Blackout Basel' is a 5 month-long residency project curated by Shazeb Arif S who is currently on a residency at Atelier Mondial in Basel.

The Blackout Festival: Swiss edition / September 2015, facilitated by Pro Helvetia - Swiss Arts Council and Atelier Mondial (Basel), is based in Ausstellungsraum Klingental. 

The project will research sub-culture and experimental artistic practices in Switzerland, besides building a new experimental community with contributions from other artists and projects in Europe and from all possible quarters around the world with a vision to build an international cross-disciplinary festival in Basel.

The framework of #blackoutbasel is to build an experimental community with multiple events. Upcoming events include:

05 Sept 2015 (1700 hrs)
Opening of exhibition: the private Blackout collection

11,12,13 Sept 2015 (all day and night)
Non-stop festival within the exhibition and in public spaces including 3 midnight events
In the public space - a live cinema project, a fashion show and a live witch hunt.

20 Sept 2015 (1700 hrs)
Closing: posh auction turns flea market

For more information click here. 
Silverlake by Alexandra Navratil at Colomboscope
Swiss artist Alexandra Navratil invited to participate at the Colomboscope Festival in August 2015.

For the third edition of the multidisciplinary arts festival COLOMBOSCOPE, the group exhibition Shadow Scenes curated by Natasha Ginwala and Menika Van der Poorten engages the post-war city Colombo through aspects of urbanization, displacement, gender, ethnicity and sexuality while undertaking a cinematic reading of modernity as a resonant field of violence.

When: 21 - 30 August 2015
Where: Colombo
Curated by Natasha Ginwala and Menika Van der Poorten
Artists: Bani Abidi, Sven Augustijnen, Pedro Gomez-Egana, Camille Henrot, Susanne Kriemann, Lucy Skaer, Agnieszka Polska, Mahbubur Rahman, Jimmy Robert, Anri Sala, Susanne Winterling, among others

Silverlake 
Video HD, colour/sound, ca. 12 min, 2015 
3 pigment and silkscreen prints 
Alexandra Navratil 

Artist's statement
I am currently producing a new single channel video-piece titled Silverlake, that will premiere at the Colomboscope Festival. This new work is a continuation of an ongoing investigation and is derived from my previous research, which divulges the history of the chemical industry, the material properties of photographic emulsion and the violence inflicted on bodies and landscapes by industrial production. 

The video will be accompanied by a series of 3 pigment and silkscreen prints, which will consist of collages from different microscopic images of silver halides. 

Silverlake will depart from a series of events and their consequent media coverage that took place in Germany just before the reunification in 1988/89. The stories that went through the press became well-known under the name of Silbersee (Silverlake) and reported on the catastrophic consequences from years of highly contaminated waste-water irrigation by the Agfa-Orwo company on the Print date 5/30/2015 / Shadow Scenes, Colomboscope 2015 2 environment and the inhabitants of the area of Bitterfeld Wolfen. Silbersee was a highly polluted lake in Bitterfeld, which had originally been a coal mine and had helped to fuel the rapid industrial development of the area at the beginning of the 20th Century. Later it was gradually filled with chemical wastewaters from the surrounding factories. Scarceness in resources and fluctuating prices of raw materials during different historical periods, forced Agfa-Orwo to recycle old films by washing off the emulsion and reusing the film base. By 1988, the lake was the most contaminated place in the whole of Germany. The silver halides, one of the main components of photographic and filmic production, gave the lake its enigmatic name.

I would like to use this historical pretext to develop a fictionalised and speculative narrative, linking thoughts on deferred violence, contamination and embodied memory in a poetic way. This narrative will not recapitulate the story of Afga-Orwo or focus specifically on the German context, but wishes to contemplate these concepts in a more universal manner. In my narration, which forms the ground structure of the video piece, we follow tiny silver fragments of filmic memory as they are washed off the film base, are poured out into the surrounding landscape, seep into the groundwater and are absorbed by plants, animals and inhabitants, becoming embodied and turning the whole environment into a photosensitive plate. This fictionalised account will be interlaced with scientific, medical information and facts and the imagery used for the video will stem largely from the media images that circulated in 1988/89 in the German and International Press

Alexandra Navratil 
Switzerland
Conrad Steinmann invited for the 6th Raasrang World Flute Festival 2015
Conrad Steinmann and ‘ensemble diferencias’ will be participating at the 6th Raasrang World Flute Festival 2015.

You are cordially invited to a performance by 
Conrad Steinmann and the ensemble diferencias 
comprising of Conrad Steinmann along with Priska Comploi, Helma Franssen and Urs Haenggli at:

Jaipur
9 September 2015 at Bar Palladio, Jaipur 
Open to all / on first-come first-served basis

Dehradun 
11 September 2015 at St Joseph's Academy, Dehradun
Open to all / on presentation of passes

Delhi 
12th Sept: Performance at Lotus Temple, New Delhi
Open to all / on presentation of passes

For information on collection of passes visit: www.krishnaprerna.in or 
call 011-29247441

About Conrad Steinmann
Born in Rapperswil (Switzerland), he pursued his studies at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, where he has been a lecturer since 1982.He has given concerts and master classes throughout Europe, in Australia, Japan, Israel, Moscow and North America.He can frequently be heard with Johann Sonnleitner, Ensemble 415,and London Baroque. As an aulos player he reflects a unique interest and knowledge of ancient Greek music. Recordings with Claves, Jecklin, Harmonia Mundi and Divox.

About the festival
The sixth edition of the Raasrang World Flute Festival, organized by Raasrang in partnership with the Times of India is scheduled to be held in September 2015. Acclaimed artistes from India and abroad will be performing at the festival.

The list of musicians participating in the festival include: 
India: Tashi Bapu (Long Horn) and team

Hungary: Both Miklos (Guitar) and team

Lithuania: Kestutis Vaiginis (Saxophone) with Pt. Sudhir Pandey (Tabla) and Fateh Ali / India (Sitar)

India: Bhimanna Yadav (Sundari) and team

Balarus: Murzina Natallia (Flute) with Babenka Volha (Flute), Stankevich Alina (Flute) and Shunkevich Maryia (Flute) 

Switzerland: Mrs. Priska Comploi (Flute), Mrs. Helma Franssen (Flute), M. Urs Haenggli (Flute), M. Conrad Steinmann (Flute)

India: Seshampa7i T Sivalingam (Nadhaswaram), Maheswari Sivalingam (Shruti), K Selvam (Nadhaswaram), M Subramaniam (Tavil), S Gajendran (Tavil), P Subramani (Tavil/ "alam)

Spain: Pedro Bonet and Belén González Castaño (Flute)

Pakistan: Akram Khan (Alghoza) and Zuheb Ahmed Khan (Tabla) 
---- 
For complete details visit: www.krishnaprerna.in or call 011-29247441