Ursula Biemann presents Deep Weather at Photosphere 2016
Deep Weather, a video essay by Ursula Biemann will be on view at Photosphere 2016 in Delhi until 31 December 2016.

Deep Weather
a video essay by Ursula Biemann

on view from 1 - 31 December 2016 
at the Open Palm Court, Visual Arts Gallery India Habitat Centre, Lodhi Road, New Delhi 110003

About Deep Weather
The impact humans are currently inflicting on the planet and its climate is of an order that surpasses common understanding. Deep Weather alludes to the world ecology as an interconnected system in which the effect of heavy fossil fuel extractions made in the boreal woods of Northern Canada are experienced by Delta inhabitants in Bangladesh who struggle to protect themselves from rising sea levels.

About Ursula Biemann
Ursula Biemann is an artist, writer, and video essayist based in Zurich, Switzerland. Her artistic practice is strongly research-oriented and involves fieldwork in remote locations. Her recent fieldwork has taken her to the forests of Amazonia and Borneo as well as the Arctic region. Engaging with the political ecology of oil, ice and water, the artist interweaves vast cinematic landscapes with documentary footage, SF poetry and academic findings to narrate a changing planetary reality.

Ursula's video installations are exhibited worldwide in museums and at international art biennials in Sao Paulo, Gwangju, Liverpool, Sharjah, Shanghai, Istanbul, Montreal, and Venice. She had comprehensive solo exhibitions at Neuer Berliner Kunstverein n.b.k.; Lentos Museum Linz and Helmhaus Zurich. Biemann has a BFA from the School of Visual Arts and attended the Whitney Independent Study Program in New York. She received a doctor honoris causa in Humanities by the Swedish University Umea and the Prix Meret Oppenheim, the Swiss Grand Award for Art. 
More: www.geobodies.org

Deep Weather is part of Habitat PHOTOSPHERE, an initiative of Visual Arts Gallery, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi. The objective of the festival is to raise environmental awareness through photography. www.indiahabitat.org/vag

Partners: Pro Helvetia - Swiss Arts Council in collaboration with Visual Art Gallery, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi

Nathalie Herschdorfer invited by Photosphere 2016

Nathalie Herschdorfer, Swiss curator and art historian and Director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Le Locle, Switzerland will be in Delhi to conduct a workshop.  

Nathalie Herschdorfer, Swiss curator and art historian and Director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Le Locle, Switzerland has been invited by HABITAT PHOTOSPHERE 2016to conduct a workshop on Curating and Thinking about Photography in Exhibitions and Books  

Dates 6 & 7 Dec 2016 / entry by registration

at the Visual Arts Gallery, India Habitat Centre, Lodhi Road, New Delhi 110003

The workshop will explore the different ways of 'image-showing' and curation in exhibitions and books.

Nathalie has also been invited by the festival directorate to conduct portfolio reviews.

About Nathalie Herschdorfer

Nathalie Herschdorfer is a curator and art historian specializing in the history of photography. She is currently Director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Le Locle, Switzerland. In 2010 she was named director of the photography festival Alt. +1000 in Switzerland for which she curated two years of programming. She has also been working as a curator with the Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography for several years. Previously, she was a curator at the Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne, where she worked for twelve years on major exhibitions, including Face: the Death of the Portrait, and retrospectives of Edward Steichen, Leonard Freed, Ray K. Metzker and Valérie Belin. 

Nathalie is the author of Afterwards: Contemporary Photography Confronting the Past (2011), editor of Le Corbusier and the Power of Photography (2012) and co-author, with William A. Ewing, of reGeneration: Tomorrow's Photographers Today, two books dedicated to emerging photography on the international scene. Among her recent projects are a Dictionary of Photography including over 1,200 concise yet fully detailed entries on all aspects of the subject (Thames & Hudson/Editions de La Martinière, 2015), the book NewSwissArchitecture (2015), and Coming into Fashion: A Century of Photography at Condé Nast, an exhibition produced by FEP and accompanied by a book published in six editions.

More: www.fep-photo.org/curator/herschdorfer/

Habitat PHOTOSPHERE is an initiative of Visual Arts Gallery, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi. The objective of the festival is to raise environmental awareness through photography. www.indiahabitat.org/vag

Possible Futures by Marie Velardi at Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai

Marie Velardi employs fact and fiction, to both imagine and question the future. 'Possible Futures' showcases works developed by her during an ongoing residency in Mumbai.

Possible Futures / येत्या काळाचं मंथन 

an exhibition by Swiss artist Marie Velardi 

at Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai

Preview: Friday 2 December 2016 at 6:30 pm

The artist will be present to conduct a walk-through

On view from 3 December 2016 until 28 February 2017

From 10:30 am - 5:30 pm. Wednesdays closed

Entry as per museum rules

About Possible Futures / येत्या काळाचं मंथन

Swiss artist Marie Velardi employs fact and fiction, to both imagine and question the future. Her work closely examines movements of the earth, such as the continuous shift between land and sea, or inhabited islands disappearing into the ocean due to rising water levels.

'Possible Futures' showcases new works developed by Marie Velardi during an ongoing residency in Mumbai.

How can we represent the passage of time through colours and shapes?

Pages of a hypothetical Book of Possible Futures, with a series of watercolour drawings named 'Temporal Maps' includes short texts in English and Marathi, inspired by discussions with Indian women on their hopes for the future. 'Temporal Maps' attempt to represent time in a disorienting multi-directional way. This work is also inspired by the Sparrow Archive- Sound and Picture Archives for Research on Women, based in Mumbai.

Terre-Mer, or 'Sea-Land', is an ongoing research project about the movement of different coastal lines through time. The works exhibited in this show depict the zone in between the land and the sea along the coast of Mumbai, from the past to the possible future. In these cartographical drawings the ancient islands that once existed reappear and reclaimed lands return to the sea.Could the futures join the past?

About the artist

Marie Velardi was born in Geneva, Switzerland. She lives and works in Geneva and Paris. Her work has been exhibited in Switzerland, France, Germany, Belgium, Italy and the UK. In 2014-2015 she represented Switzerland at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale in India. She has won various awards; among them the '2015 Scholarship of the City of Geneva' for her on-going research project called "Terre-Mer" ("Sea-Land"). In 2016 she was selected by Pro Helvetia for a three-month residency in India (in Delhi and Mumbai). Marie Velardi - Marie Velardi: http://marie.velardi.ch/

Partner: Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum - www.bdlmuseum.org

Poetry in percussion | Mumbai, Goa & Delhi

Swiss music legends Pierre Favre and Lucas Niggli and tabla maestro Aneesh Pradhan from India will come together this December to present their collaborative work.

Indo - Swiss percussion trio to perform in Mumbai, Goa and Delhi 

Tour schedule: 
15 Dec 2016 - The Cuckoo Club, Mumbai 
17 Dec 2016 -  Art Chamber, Goa 
19 Dec 2016 - OddBird, Delhi 
Entry as per venue rules. Please contact the venue directly for details.

Swiss music legends Pierre Favre and Lucas Niggli and Tabla maestro Aneesh Pradhan from India will come together this November to present an evening of rhythms, beats and friendship. The tour follows an initiative of Pro Helvetia New Delhi to bring together leading percussionists from Switzerland and India to create work during an intensive workshop last year. Lucas Niggli, Pierre Favre from Switzerland and Aneesh Pradhan from India met in March 2015 at Peninsula Studios in Delhi to prepare these and other compositions. 

Line-up: 
Pierre Favre and Lucas Niggli (drums) 
Aneesh Pradhan (tablas) 

About the artists: 
Pierre Favre: www.pierrefavre.ch/pierre.html?lang=en 
Aneesh Pradhan: www.aneeshpradhan.com 
Lucas Niggli: www.lucasniggli.ch/english/index.asp

Swiss band HELY to play in Delhi, Pune, Goa and Kolkata

Swiss band HELY comprising of Lucca Fries on the piano and Jonas Ruther on the drums will be in India this November.

 European jazz-piano bands HELY from Switzerland will play in Delhi, Pune, Goa and Kolkata . 

Date/ venue: 
Nov 23rd, The Piano Man Jazz Club, DELHI 
Nov 25th, Shisha Café Jazz Festival, PUNE 
Nov 26th, Goa International Jazz Live Festival 2016 
Nov 27th, The Jazz Fest, KOLKATA

Entry as per festival and venue rules. 
For timings please visit www.prohelvetia.in closer to the date.

About HELY - Jangal 
HELY is a powerful duo from Switzerland, with Lucca Fries on the piano and Jonas Ruther on the drums. HELY stand out musically and formally in the landscape of European jazz-piano bands. What makes the artful interaction of the young duo from Zurich so unique is - amongst other aspects - the profound understanding of the respective counterpart. So it is a more than intuitive closeness that is reflected in HELY's compositions. It manifests itself in the tight interlocking of the instruments, in a multifaceted sound and the infectious rhythmic flow. Meandering lines let classical minimalism flash up on the horizon. Dynamically swelling figures and acuminating staccatos arouse an almost trance-like atmosphere. With somnambulistic certainty, piano and drums move between clarity and complexity, between interesting harmonies and timbres. Open structures intensify slowly, but inexorably; a direct, but never overly flaunting energy inevitably draws the listener into HELY's oscillating universe. The concentration on piano and drums offers a tremendous potential for surprises, which the two young Swiss musicians fathom precisely and joyfully.

The album title Jangal means "thicket" in Farsi and was taken from the piece of the same name. "Our working title for this composition was 'Jungle', because it sounds like a huge anthill and snakes," the duo explains. All in all, it is not seldom, that HELY's music sounds like a jungle whose dense diversity inescapably fascinates and at a second glance reveals exciting details.

More: www.hely.ch/hely.html
Live: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_Lv3m58pWU

Partners: Pro Helvetia - Swiss Arts Council in collaboration with Gatecrash

Swiss artists at Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2016
Swiss sculptors and installation artists Bob Gramsma and Latifa Echakhch will be in Kochi this December to participate in the Biennale. Andreas Koller will be working on the Biennale's short catalogue and review catalogue.

Swiss artists, Bob Gramsma and Latifa Echakhch have been invited by the Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2016, which is to open for public viewing on 12 December 2016.

Andreas Koller, an interaction designer and visual artist, who is currently a designer at EPFL+ECAL Lab in Lausanne, will be the Editor of the Biennale's short catalogue and review catalogue. The objective of this collaboration is to increase and intensify Pro Helvetia - Swiss Artist's engagement and emphasise the potential of intercultural engagement and skill sharing.

The Kochi-Muziris Biennale is a platform that aims to introduce contemporary international visual art theory and practice in the region while showcasing new Indian and international aesthetics and art initiatives. For more information on Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2016 visit https://www.kochimuzirisbiennale.org/

About the participating artists

BOB GRAMSMA
Bob Gramsma is a Swiss/Dutch sculptor and installation artist who lives and works in Zurich. Consistent throughout Gramsma's career has been an engagement with space and how the body mediates itself through space, time, imagination and thinking, all at once. Since the beginning of the 1990s the artist has been concerned with creating spaces and their inextricable connections to people. His sculptural and installation works raise the question of how space is conceived and how this has an effect on our consciousness. For over 20 years Gramsma has exhibited extensively, including at the Kunst (Zeug) Haus, Rapperswil; Kunstmuseum Sankt Gallen, St.Gallen; Helmhaus, Zurich; Kunsthaus CentrePasquArt Centre d'art, Biel; FRAC Bourgogne, Dijon; Kunstverein Ulm; Kunstverein Ruhr, Essen; Contemporary Art Center, Vilnius; MoMA PS1, New York; Swiss Institute, New York; Vögele Kultur Zentrum, Pfäffikon; Kunstmuseum, Bern; and the Musée d'art contemporain de Lyon. Gramsma has presented major projects as part of Art Public Chur 2016 in Chur; Lokaltermin Schwamendingen, Art in public space in Zurich; Môtiers 2015 - Art en plein air in Môtiers; the Turtmann Triennale of 2013 in Wallis; and the 2011 Bex & Arts Triennale de sculpture contemporaine en plain air, Bex. More: www.bobgramsma.com

LATIFA ECHAKHCH
Latifa Echakhch was born in 1974 in El Khnansa, Morocco, grew up in France and now lives in Fully, Switzerland. Echakhch's installation and sculptural works are characterised by simple and bold gestures and materials. She interrogates themes and issues ranging from individual and cultural identity, to personal and collective histories, and sociopolitical contexts such as current international migration and humanitarian conditions. Echakhch has presented solo exhibitions at the Protocinema, Istanbul; Portikus, Frankfurt am Main; Kunsthaus, Zurich; Museum Haus Esters, Kunstmuseen, Krefeld; Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona; and Tate Modern, London. Her work has been featured in thematic exhibitions internationally, such as EMERGE SELECTIONS 2016, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, 2016; Nel mezzo del mezzo, Palazzo Riso, Palermo; DECORUM, Museé d'Art Moderne, Paris; It is what it is. Or is it?, Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, 2012; ILLUMInations, Venice Biennale, Venice, 2011; 21st Century: Art in the First Decade, Queensland Art Gallery, Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, 2010; Flow, Studio Museum Harlem, New York, 2008; and, Global Feminisms, Brooklyn Museum, New York and Davis Museum and Cultural Center, Wellesley, Massachusetts, 2007.

Sound sculpture by Zimoun at Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai

Sound sculpture by Swiss sound artist Zimoun at Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai

Pro Helvetia - Swiss Arts Council in partnership with Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai and Sound Reasons Festival V presents
80 prepared dc-motors, cotton balls, cardboard boxes
a sound sculpture by Swiss sound artist 

Zimoun

at Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai

Also on exhibit will be Faulty scales can weigh you correctly / A Moth and a Room by Indian sound artist ISh S / diFfused Beats

On view from 6 to 30 November 2016
at Special Project Space Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum
Veer Mata Jijabai Bhosale Udyan (Rani Baug) 91/A, Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Road, Byculla East, Mumbai 400027
From 10:30 am - 5:30 pm.
Wednesdays closed
Entry as per museum rules

About the sound sculpture:
80 prepared dc-motors, cotton balls, cardboard boxes a sound sculpture by Swiss artist Zimoun Presented as part of Sound Reasons Festival V Also on exhibit Faulty scales can weigh you correctly / A Moth and a Room by ISh S / diFfused Beats About Zimoun Using simple and functional components, Zimoun builds architecturally-minded platforms of sound. Exploring mechanical rhythm and flow in prepared systems, his installations incorporate commonplace industrial objects. In an obsessive display of simple and functional materials, these works articulate a tension between the orderly patterns of Modernism and the chaotic forces of life. Carrying an emotional depth, the acoustic hum of natural phenomena in Zimoun's minimalist constructions effortlessly reverberates.

Zimoun lives and works in Bern, Switzerland. Recent displays of his work include exhibitions at the Nam June Paik Art Museum in Korea; Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts, Taipei; Ringling Museum of Art, Florida; Harnett Museum of Art, Richmond; bitforms gallery New York; Kunsthalle Bern; Seoul Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art Liechtenstein; Fine Arts Museum Rennes; Art Basel; Central for Contemporary Art Brussels; Galerie Denise René Paris; Museum Les Champs Libres, Rennes; Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Mumbai City Museum; Contemporary Art Museum MNAC Bucharest; Beall Art Center, Los Angeles; Museum of Fine Arts Bern; Museum of Contemporary Art MSUM, Ljubljana; National Art Museum, Beijing; Museum of Fine Arts Lugano; among others.
Zimoun - zimoun.net

Partners:
Pro Helvetia - Swiss Arts Council, Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai and Sound Reasons V

More: 
Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum - www.bdlmuseum.org 

Photo Kathmandu 2016
Lars Willumeit and Yann Mingard from Switzerland will be conducting a workshop on Long-term Project Ambulance

PHOTO KATHMANDU 2016 has invited 
Lars Willumeit and Yann Mingard from Switzerland to conduct a workshop on
LONG-TERM PROJECT AMBULANCE 

on 22 - 24 October 2016
Application deadline: 30 September 2016 
Venue: Yala Maya Kendra, Patan Dhoka
Language: English 

About the workshop
This three-day workshop is conceived as an intense communicative encounter for photographers and artists who are at the intermediate stages of conceiving and/or producing a long-term photographic project. The participants will have 'one-on-two' sessions with photographer Yann Mingard, and Lars Willumeit, a curator with a background in arts education and photo-editing. The dialogical process will reflect upon aspects of editing, sequencing, storytelling, conceptualisation, etc. as well as the processes of collaborating with others, and formatting a project for publication, exhibition, etc. 

About the mentors
Yann Mingard (born 1973) is a Swiss photographer, who worked as a horticulturist-gardener before he studied photography at the Universities of Geneva and Vevey. Over the past ten years Mingard has worked predominantly on long-term projects that explore the politics of modern identity formation as contained in human interactions with nature and the built environment. His long-term projects include Deposit, a project documenting the way we as humanity collect and store human and biological samples, as well as electronic data; which was presented both as a book and a solo exhibition exhibited in more than twenty institutions and festivals. More recently, 'Ligne de Fond' also resulted in both book and exhibition formats and was conceived as part of the inaugural Enquête photographique neuchâteloise, exhibited at Musée des beaux- arts du Locle (CH) in 2015. Here, Mingard closely followed the intended route of a never realised transport project called TransRun; investigating the landscape, politics and identity of the Neuchâtel region. Mingard has also worked in a number of regions of Central Asia and has completed projects in the Tuva Republic and the Kazakhstan oil industry. As well as having exhibited throughout Europe and in the United States, his work has been published widely in major magazines and newspapers globally. www.yannmingard.ch

Lars Willumeit (born 1974) is a German social anthropologist based in Zurich, Switzerland. As an independent curator, author, and photo editor, he has worked with photography in different modes since 1993. His interests lie in photography, documentarisms, regimes of representation, and visual cultures. Over the past 15 years he has worked as a photo editor & researcher for a number of photo agencies and publications in Germany, the UK, the USA and Switzerland, notably for magazines like GEO (2002-2006) and DU - Die Zeitschrift der Kultur (2008-2013). Between 2013 and 2015, he curated exhibitions and festival presentations for East Wing (Dubai) and the FORMAT International Photography Festival (UK). He was also a contributing author to the photo-book 'Deposit' by Yann Mingard, and in 2016 he was chief curator of Krakow Photomonth in Poland. He received his Master of Arts degree in Curating and Museum Education, at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK). His thesis examined the future of photographic institutions in relation to changes taking place within photographic practice and theory. In addition he holds a Bachelor of Science in Social Anthropology from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). www.larswillumeit.com

To apply and for application details visit:
www.photoktm.com/2016/workshop/long-term-project-ambulance/  

Q&A: BIG-GAME curated by ICD
An exhibition of a retrospective selection of 10 products designed by BIG-GAME and paired with corresponding items from India, selected by Itu Chaudhuri.

Exhibition Q&A: BIG-GAME curated by Itu Chaudhuri
Monday 3 October at 6:30 pm at 125 MCM, Meher Chand Market, New Delhi. 
Entry by invitation only

Design studios BIG-GAME from Switzerland & ITU CHAUDHURI DESIGN (ICD) from India present an exhibition of a retrospective selection of 10 products designed by BIG-GAME and paired with corresponding items from India, selected by Itu Chaudhuri Design and invite designers and audience members to participate in the resulting cross-cultural, intuitive 'dialog between the products'. The event is by invitation only. 

After " Q&A: BIG-GAME curated by David Glaettli " in Tokyo, it is now the turn of " Q&A: BIG-GAME curated by ICD " in New Delhi!

In this exhibition, BIG-GAME presents a retrospective selection of 10 products designed over the past 10 years. In addition, every of these products designed by BIG-GAME is paired with one item found in India, selected by ICD. These 10 finds represent Indian counterparts to BIG-GAME's products, that relate to them, explain and contextualize them in unexpected ways. By this means, the exhibits form a cross-cultural, intuitive "dialog between things" that gives a playful insight in BIG-GAME's way of thinking and working - rooted and inspired by the things that surround all of us in everyday life- and ultimately show the universality of functional, playful design. 

About BIG-GAME : www.big-game.ch 
About Itu Design Studio / ICD: http://icdindia.com/

Swiss writer Markus Kirchhofer invited to India
Markus Kirchhofer will read in prose and poetry from his books “Eisfischen” and “Der Stachel”, in Delhi, Pune and Goa.

DELHI: 
23 September 2016 / as part of Long Night of LiteratureS 2016
26 September 2016 / British School, Delhi

PUNE:
27 September 2016 / Department of Foreign Languages, Pune University

GOA:
29 September 2016 / Literati Goa at 7:00 pm

About Markus Kirchhofer, Switzerland
Markus Kirchhofer was born in 1963 in the Canton of Aargau in Switzerland. He worked as a cultural interpreter at the Stapferhaus in Lenzburg Castle after which he studied in Paris. Subsequently, he worked as a teacher (1993-2010) and later as a teacher trainer (1996-2013). He has been a freelance writer since 2013. Markus Kirchhofer wrote his first poems when he was seven, guided by his teacher Jannis Zinniker. He authored ten graphic novels, which he published together with the Swiss illustrators Diego Balli, Hannes Binder, Reto Gloor, Melk Thalmann and Silvan Wegmann as well as with Iranian illustrator Parsua Bashi.

His first solo publications, a volume of poems titled “Eisfischen” (2014) and a book of short stories “Der Stachel” (2016), were published by the Knapp Verlag in Switzerland. Apart from his books, Markus Kirchhofer has written columns and been involved in theatre and exhibition making. Markus Kirchhofer’s literary works have received numerous awards. He recently received grants from the Aargau Kuratorium (2014) and Pro Helvetia- Swiss Arts Council (2015).

Markus and his wife Brigitte Vogt, a pharmacist, have been living in Oberkulm (Switzerland) since 1997.

Markus Kirchhofer at Long Night of LiteratureS 2016
Swiss German author Markus Kirchhofer will represent Switzerland at the Long Night of LiteratureS 2016, an evening of literary encounters.

Speed dating can be a lot of fun, especially if each encounter is from a different European country!

Here’s presenting literature enthusiasts the opportunity to speed-date with 
10 authors from 
10 European countries in 
07 different European languages!

Join in for an evening of literary encounters in French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Norwegian, Polish and Spanish with authors from Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Norway, Poland, Spain and Switzerland. The authors will present readings of their texts in their respective languages as well as in English. 

On Friday 23 September 2016 at 5:30 pm 
at Instituto Cervantes, 48 Hanuman Road, New Delhi 
Entry by prior registration. Email longnightlit(at)gmail.com to register. 
Registration open from: 12th – 20th September 2016

An initiative supported by the European Union, this evening of readings is a collaborative presentation by Austrian Cultural Forum, Embassy of the Kingdom of Belgium, Institut Français en Inde, Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan, Hungarian Information and Cultural Centre, Italian Embassy Cultural Centre, Royal Norwegian Embassy, Polish Institute, Insituto Cervantes, Pro Helvetia - Swiss Arts Council and Embassy of Switzerland. 

List of participating authors: Vea Kaiser, Austria; Jean-Pierre Orban, Belgium; Makenzy Orcel, France; Line Hoven, Germany; Mátyás Sirokai, Hungary; Laila Wadia, Italy; Johan Harstad, Norway; Jacek Dehnel, Poland; Gabriela Ybarra, Spain and Markus Kirchhofer, Switzerland.

The format encourages the audience 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 group then moves to the next room to listen to another author. This concept allows the audience close interactions with the authors. 

About Markus Kirchhofer, Switzerland
Markus Kirchhofer was born in 1963 in the Canton of Aargau in Switzerland. He worked as a cultural interpreter at the Stapferhaus in Lenzburg Castle after which he studied in Paris. Subsequently, he worked as a teacher (1993-2010) and later as a teacher trainer (1996-2013). He has been a freelance writer since 2013. Markus Kirchhofer wrote his first poems when he was seven, guided by his teacher Jannis Zinniker. He authored ten graphic novels, which he published together with the Swiss illustrators Diego Balli, Hannes Binder, Reto Gloor, Melk Thalmann and Silvan Wegmann as well as with Iranian illustrator Parsua Bashi. His first solo publications, a volume of poems titled “Eisfischen” (2014) and a book of short stories “Der Stachel” (2016), were published by the Knapp Verlag in Switzerland. Apart from his books, Markus Kirchhofer has written columns and been involved in theatre and exhibition making. Markus Kirchhofer’s literary works have received numerous awards. He recently received grants from the Aargau Kuratorium (2014) and Pro Helvetia- Swiss Arts Council (2015). Markus and his wife Brigitte Vogt, a pharmacist, have been living in Oberkulm (Switzerland) since 1997.

To view details about all the authors click here.

FIELD by Tabea Martin
IGNITE! Festival of Contemporary Dance organised by GATI Dance Forum invites Tabea Martin to present her work at Delhi and Jaipur.

Tabea Martin [Switzerland]
Field | 45 min

DELHI
Sunday, 16 October 2016, 6 pm
OddBird Theatre, Dhanmill Compound, 100ft. Road, Chattarpur, New Delhi- 110074
Donor Pass INR 300

JAIPUR
Wednesday, 19 October 2016
Jawahar Kala Kendra 
Contact venue for timing and ticket details)

About the performance
Three bodies. One field. The 100 best love songs.

They long for something to happen, for some explosion. They fight fiercely for love, for affection, for recognition. Startlingly athletic and dynamic, this trio is a battlefield. 

A performance about the tireless fight, that something should happen in life. And the disillusionment that if something happens, then it's not been the right thing. That the more you want to experience the less you experience. A performance that is trying to understand what drives people and how they can engage. A performance, with three people who want to connect with one another.

About Tabea Martin
Tabea Martin is a choreographer and performer based in Amsterdam and Basel/Zürich, Switzerland. She studied Modern Theatre Dance at the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten in Amsterdam. She was active as a dancer in different dance companies in Holland, Germany and Ireland. In 2006 she graduated with a second degree from the Rotterdamse Dansacademie, Rotterdam, in Choreography. During her studies, she was also a guest student at SNDO in Amsterdam. She has been creating works and presenting them at various festivals and venues across the world.

Cast + Credits
Choreography: Tabea Martin
Choreographic assistant: Viola Perra
Dancers: Raquel Miro, Luca Cacitti, Carl Staaf
Dramaturgy: Youness Anzane
Light designer: Minna Heikkilä
Light: Dave Staring
Costume: Mirjam Egli
Photo credit: Pepijn-Lutgerink
Production: Cecile Brissier / Kilim Production
Co-production: Gymnase CDC / Roubaix - Kaserne Basel
Distribution: Larissa Bizer / produktionswerkstatt
Thanks: Sebastian Nübling, Matthias Mooij, Rebecca Weingartner, Laura Pregger, Pol Bierhoff

Partners: Rotterdamse Schouwburg / Rotterdam - Theater aan het Vrijthof / Maastricht - Grand Theatre / Groningen - ADN / Neuchatel
With the support of: Centre National de la Danse / Paris - Kanton Basel-Landschaft
Supported at IGNITE! 2016 by:Pro Helvetia - Swiss Arts Council 

BIG-GAME to visit India
Swiss product and interior design studio BIG-GAME will deliver a talk on 'Functionalism' in Bangalore and Goa and present 'Q&A' in collaboration with Indian designer Itu Chaudhuri.

Swiss product and interior design studio BIG-GAME to deliver talk on 
'Functionalism' in Bangalore and Goa.
Date/ venue:
Bangalore
Monday 26 September 
Workshop for students at Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology 

Tuesday 27 September at 6:30 pm 
Talk at Swissnex India on FUNCTIONALISM Entry by registration. 
To register visit https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/WKWPRZL

View invite >>

About BIG-GAME 
BIG-GAME is a product and interior design studio based in Lausanne, Switzerland. It was created by Augustin Scott de Martinville, Elric Petit and Grégoire Jeanmonod. Augustin Scott de Martinville, Grégoire Jeanmonod and Elric Petit are BIG-GAME. The studio describes their work as simple, functional and optimistic. They produce a variety of products and accessories for companies such as Alessi, Hay, Karimoku, Muji, Lexon, Nespresso and Moustache. BIG-GAME's work is often accessible, charming and, above all, useful. The studio has received numerous awards including the Swiss Design Award, the iF design award, the Wallpaper Design Award, the Good Design Award, the Hublot Design Award and Design Preis Schweiz. BIG-GAME's works are part of the collections of the Museum fur Gestaltung, the Musée du Grand-Hornu, the Centre Georges Pompidou as well as the MoMA. The studio is based in Lausanne, Switzerland. In addition to their design work, the three founders of BIG-GAME also serve as professors at ECAL / University of Arts and Design Lausanne. www.big-game.ch About the Talk on FUNCTIONALISM Swiss design is famous for its rational approach and the emphasis it puts on function. As a studio based in Switzerland, when designing furniture, watches, tableware or interiors for clients in Japan, Italy or Denmark, we clearly value function, but we also try to add an element of playfulness and optimism. Here are a few examples of our work from around the world. 

About the exhibition Q&A 
Q&A to be held in Delhi Monday 3 Oct 2016 at 125 MCM New Delhi with Indian designer Itu Chaudhuri of Itu Chaudhuri Design. The Q&A exhibition concept is based on a dialogue between 10 products designed by BIG-GAME design studio and 10 items selected by a designer in a specific hosting country. The result is a playful exhibition that confronts BIG-GAME's view on design with the local culture of objects. The opening is a great opportunity for international exchange for the designers to share stories about objects through an informal presentation. So far, the concept has been executed in Tokyo, Prague, Bordeaux, Barcelona and Mexico City. 

Partners: Pro Helvetia - Swiss Arts Council in collaboration with swissnex India and Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology.

Swiss photography books at PondyPHOTO 2016
A collection of Swiss books on photography will be on display at the Swiss PHOTO Corner at Kasha Ki Aasha in Pondicherry.

PondyPHOTO, a biennale festival initiated by PondyART, is a platform where art and education attempt to break existing social barriers, by presenting photography-oriented events focused on today's social and environmental issues in public spaces.

The theme for PondyPHOTO 2016 is WATER.
Open and free to the public
27 August -11 September 2016

SWISS PHOTO CORNER
Fotomuseum Winterthur has put together a collection of books on photography for the Swiss PHOTO Corner at Kasha Ki Aasha in Pondicherry as part of pondyPHOTO 2016. The display can be viewed until 11 September.


PHOTOGRAPHY IN SWITZERLAND
Also on display will be "Photography in Switzerland", an online resource
ASIP (Association Suisse des Institutions pour la Photographie) has launched a new website on photography in Switzerland. Find museums, galleries, collections, archives, libraries, festivals, schools in Switzerland! To visit click here.

The Swiss List
The Swiss List in partnership with Seagull Books is an effort to bring Swiss literature to readers around the world.

With the latest addition to the Swiss List published by Seagull Books, the number of books in English by Swiss writers now on the stands is twenty-six.

The publication of the Swiss List in partnership with Seagull Books is an effort to bring Swiss literature to readers around the world. An extension of the initiative «Moving Words», the Swiss List has had demonstrable impact. Audiences across the globe now have access to Swiss Literature and literary translators from varying nationalities have had the opportunity to network and engage with Swiss writers. The number of translations of Swiss literature will continue to increase, with Seagull Books looking at publishing another few titles by year end. Pro Helvetia - Swiss Arts Council supports translation.

The Swiss List comprises of the following titles:

An Answer from the Silence, a Story from the Mountains by Max Frisch
Translated by Mike Mitchell

All the Roads are Open by Annemarie Schwarzenbach
Translated by Isabel Fargo Cole

Collected Poems by Rainer Brambach 
Translated by Esther Kinsky

Correspondence by Frisch Dürrenmatt’s
Translated by Birgit Schreyer Duarte 

'Death in Persia' by Annemarie Schwarzenbach
Translated by Lucy Renner Jones

Drafts for a Third Sketchbook by Max Frisch 
Translated by Mike Mitchell

Efina by Nöelle Revaz 
Translated by David Ball and Nicole Ball

Fly Away, Pigeon by Melinda Nadj Abonji
Translated by Tess Lewis

In the Congo by Urs Widmer
Translated by Donal McLaughlin

Invitation to the Bold of Heart by Dorothee Elmiger
Translated by Cathy Derbyshire 

Like Bits of Wind by Pierre Chappuis
Translated by John Taylor

Lyric Novella by Annemarie Schwarzenbach
Translated by Lucy Renner Jones

Mr Adamson by Urs Widmer
Translated by Donal McLaughlin

My Mother's Lover by Urs Widmer
Translated by Donal Mc Laughlin 

My Father's Book by Urs Widmer
Translated by Donal Mc Laughlin 

Noah by Hugo Loetscher
Translated by Samuel P. Willcocks

Obscurity by Philippe Jaccottet
Translated by Tess Lewis

‘On Life, Death, and This and That of the Rest’ by Urs Widmer 
Translated by Donal McLaughlin

Privy Portrait by Jean-Luc Benoziglio 
Translated by Tess Lewis

Seedtime Notebooks, 1954–79 by Philippe Jaccottet
Translated by Tess Lewis

Selected Essays by Friedrich Dürrenmatt 
Translated by Isabel Fargo Cole

Stigmata of Bliss: Three Novellas by Klaus Merz
Translated by Tess Lewis

The Blue Soda Siphon by Urs Widmer
Translated by Donal McLaughlin

The Encyclopaedia of Good Reasons by Monica Cantieni 
Translated by Donal McLaughlin

The Pilgrim's Bowl by Giorgio Morandi
Translated by John Taylor

The Spirits of the Earth by Catherine Colomb
Translated by John Taylor

Links www: www.seagullindia.com/books/defaultnew.asp

Partner: Seagull India - www.seagullindia.com

Pepper House Residency, Kochi invites Augustin Rebetez
Swiss artist Augustin Rebetez will be in India this August to avail of a residency he has been offered at the Pepper house Residency.

Augustin Rebetez will be in Kochi India this August to avail of a residency he has been offered at the Pepper house Residency. His residency will involve community engagement.

About Augustin Rebetez 
Augustin Rebetez (1986) works in various media including painting, photography, video, sculpture, installations and mobile. Since 2009, he has been regularly showing his work in Switzerland and abroad, alternating between solo exhibitions and collaborative projects.

Augustin Rebetez was awarded the Photo Folio Review by the Rencontres d'Arles 2010, The Swiss Photo Award in 2012, the Foam Talent in 2013 and the Vevey International Photo Award 2013-2014. His works are part of the collections of Musée de l'Elysée Lausanne, Musée de l'Appareil Photographique Vevey, Kunst Museum Thun, Credit Suisse, Aargauer Kunsthaus Aarau, Mudac Lausanne, and Centre Dürrenmatt Neuchâtel, amongst others. 

About Pepper House Residency 
The Pepper House Residency programme is an international residency opportunity for artists from all disciplines to work and collaborate within a studio space situated at the Pepper House, Fort Kochi in preparation for the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Dec 2016 to March 2017. The residency is structured on the idea of a three-dimensional approach to creativity in which the idea of artistic practice is supported by its two necessary extensions - public interaction and inquiry.

Pepper House Residency aims to seek and open channels of communication between the artist and public and to serve as a space for the exploration and evolution of the idea and themes of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale. 

For more info on Augustin Rebetez: www.augustinrebetez.com/ 
For more info on Pepper House Residency: www.kochimuzirisbiennale.org/pepper-house-residency/  

Functional Beauty - Design from Switzerland
Talk by Swiss design curator Ariana Pradal in Delhi at 125 MCM at Meher Chand Market on Tuesday 2 August 2016

Talk by Swiss design curator ARIANA PRADAL 
Tuesday 2 August 2016 at 125 MCM, Meher Chand Market, New Delhi 

Functional Beauty - Design from Switzerland 
Switzerland is a small country in the middle of Europe. It is surrounded by big neighbours, and its centre consists largely of mountains. But there is more to Switzerland than just mountains, chocolate, watches and army knives. For about one hundred years there has been a growing and lively design community. The country's only raw material is water, and this is why the Swiss economy started concentrating on export very early. This was made possible due to high quality and niche products. The talk will give a quick overview of Swiss design. 

About Ariana Pradal 
Ariana Pradal has trained as an industrial designer and works as a journalist and curator. She writes and works regularly for various magazines and museums in the field of design and architecture. Her articles, books and exhibitions have been printed and presented in Switzerland and abroad.

Ariana Pradal studied industrial design at the Zurich School of Art and Design, (now the Zurich University of the Arts, Zhdk). Having gained experience by working in various design offices she decided to switch to a new role within the creative sector: instead of designing objects herself, she started to write about them. She completed a two-year traineeship with Hochparterre, a Swiss journal of design and architecture, while at the same time taking courses at the Swiss School of Journalism in Lucerne. During her time at Hochparterre she wrote articles, designed exhibitions, worked on books and gave lectures - setting the course for her future career. The time was then ripe for a change of direction, working in another country and in another field: Ariana Pradal spent six months in New York with Location Switzerland, the Swiss economic promotion body, gathering experience and awareness of the worlds of business and diplomacy.

After returning to Switzerland she spent three years working part time for the architectural journal Werk, Bauen und Wohnen, (wbw.ch). At the same time she wrote for other journals, and was commissioned by the Industrial Design section of the Zhdk to work on a project with the Pro Pueblo foundation in Ecuador. She also taught at various universities of applied sciences and sat on juries awarding diplomas. After her engagement at the architectural journal Werk, Bauen und Wohnen she worked two years as architecture critic for the newspaper Sonntag. Today she works as an independent journalist and curator in the areas of design, architecture and related disciplines. Her articles, books and exhibitions have been printed and presented in Switzerland and abroad. In addition she acts as a technical expert advising various cultural and political institutions. In 2010 she was appointed by the Swiss Federal Office of Culture for the "Mediation in Art and Architecture award 2010".

For more information on Ariana Pradal visit www.pradal.ch

A presentation by Gujral Foundation and Pro Helvetia - Swiss Arts Council 

Ariana Pradal invited for Experimenter Curator's Hub
After Giovanni Carmine, Adam Szymczyk, Oliver Kielmayer, Patrick Gosatti and Nadia Schneider Willen, it's Swiss curator Ariana Pradal next at the 6th edition of the Experimenter Curators' Hub 2016 in Kolkata. More

Pro Helvetia New Delhi is pleased to partner with Experimenter to present the 6th edition of the Experimenter Curators’ Hub 2016, on Thursday, 28th, Friday, 29th & Saturday, 30th July 2016 which will take place at Experimenter, 2/1 Hindustan Road, Kolkata 700029, India.

Swiss design curator Ariana Pradal will be representing Switzerland.

About Ariana Pradal
Ariana Pradal Ariana Pradal, trained as an industrial designer, works as a journalist and curator. She writes and works regularly for various magazines and museums in the field of design and architecture. Her articles, books and exhibitions have been printed and presented in Switzerland and abroad. 

The Experimenter Curators’ Hub is a crucial platform in developing and sustaining discourse on curatorial practice and exhibition making. Each year the hub invites curators to present and discuss their practice in depth with reference to recent exhibitions curated by them. The 6th edition of the Experimenter Curators’ Hub will bring together some of the foremost minds in curatorship from all over the world. 

The participating curators at ECH 2016 are: Ariana Pradal, Cosmin Costinas, Dayanita Singh, Giorgio Galleani, Marta Smolinska, Maud Page, Naman Ahuja, Natasha Ginwala, Rahaab Allana Susie Lingham and Hans-Ulrich Obrist (via video conference)

The 3-day event will see a coming together of Indian and international curators and the visual arts community, critics, writers, thinkers, artists, collectors, theorists and people interested in contemporary visual art practice. This year the curators’ hub broadens its scope by including curators of architecture and design as well as curators of visual art. The Experimenter Curators’ Hub, like every year attempts to further the discussion on curatorial practices and discourse.

Experimenter Curators’ Hub 2016 is presented in association with Pro Helvetia - The Swiss Arts Council and is supported by the Australia Council for the Arts, Italian Cultural Embassy, Polish Institute & The Park Hotels. Take on Art Magazine is a media partner for the Hub.

DRAFT | The Zurich Conference
An initiative by Khanabadosh (Mumbai) and Institute for Contemporary Art Research (IFCAR), Zurich University of the Arts

The Zurich Conference
July 28-30, 2016
Limmat Hall, Hardturmstr. 122a8005 Zurich West, Switzerland

Draft explores contemporary art that produces, contributes to or provokes public debate. It involves nine interdisciplinary collaboratives from nine cities: Beijing, Cairo, Cape Town, Hamburg, Hong Kong, Mexico City, Mumbai, St. Petersburg and Zurich. The conference is focused on the projects developed and carried out by the collaboratives over the past 12 months in their local contexts. The projects intervene in contexts of action, production and discourse, by exploring the imaginary, rendering the latent visible or critiquing concrete circumstances. 

Media censorship, state authoritarianism, social injustice, xenophobia, nationalism, various forms of violence, migration, the effects of frantic urbanisation, real estate speculation, commodities trading and repatriation are some of the pressing issues highlighted by these year-long investigations. Artists respond to these circumstances through critique and fiction, by establishing infrastructures, educational programmes and counter publics, and by employing re-enactments and mnemonic techniques. They reveal the consequences of such phenomena and processes on our affective and intellectual life-in short, they draft a different history and a different present. The conference will address the notion of debate: debate as a device for managing conflicts, negotiating standpoints, making things public and defining the space we live in. It will be focused in particular on the debate around the crises of belonging-i.e. who can belong, to what and how much-a subterranean reverb that runs through each of the projects. 

Draft was launched in June 2015 with a conference in Mumbai where the positions and working methodologies of the collaboratives and their members were presented. The 2016 conference in Zürich will provide insights into art activities undertaken as part of Draft, and discuss them in terms of their sources and research materials, approaches adopted and their consequences for life-worlds. How do these projects change their context, our worldview or concrete action? How do they maintain dissent and promote complexity? What do they appeal for?

The upcoming conference is also imagined as a research and pedagogical environment; it will be attended by approximately 40 students visiting from universities across Alexandria, Hangzhou, Hong Kong, Johannesburg, Mexico City, New Delhi, Palermo, St. Petersburg, and Zurich. The students will be in town forNegotiating Space: Art and Dissent, the International ZHdK Summer School 2016, convened in cooperation with Manifesta 11.

Contributors: Giorgio Biancorosso, CAMP (Shaina Anand, Ashok Sukumaran, Simpreet Singh), Helena Chávez Mac Gregor, Chto Delat (Tsaplya Olga Egorova, Nikolay Oleynikov, Dmitry Vilensky), Cosmin Costinas (Para Site), CTC. Curating the City (Sophie Goltz, Alice Peragine), Gitanjali Dang, Anila Daulatzai, Gareth Evans, Gabrielle Goliath, Rupali Gupte and Prasad Shetty, Rohit Jain, Ju Anqi, knowbotiq (Christian Hübler, Yvonne Wilhelm with Nina Bandi), Qinyi Lim, Jens Maier-Rothe, Cuauhtémoc Medina, Jasmina Metwaly and Philip Rizk, Alia Mossallam, Riason Naidoo, Ambimbola Odubegsan, Richard Pithouse, Sarah Rifky, Uzma Rizvi, Nils Röller, Christoph Schenker, Teatro Ojo (Héctor Bourges Valles, Laura Furlan Magaril, Karla Rodríguez Lira, Patricio Villarreal Ávila), Xu Peili (Mianbu), Samson Young and Zheng Bo

The conference is open to the public. Admission is free.
For more information and details of the programme please visit our website.

Artistic directors: Gitanjali Dang/Khanabadosh and Christoph Schenker/IFCAR

Partners: Pro Helvetia - Swiss Arts Council, and Connecting Spaces Hong Kong - Zurich
Supported by: artEDU Foundation, Stanley Thomas Johnson Foundation

Meet Swiss curator Ariana Pradal
Ariana Pradal, industrial designer, journalist and curator will be in India for the Experimenter Curator's Hub in Kolkata and will also deliver a talk in Delhi.

Meet Swiss curator Ariana Pradal
at

KOLKATA
at the 6th edition of the Experimenter Curator's Hub in Kolkata
on 28, 29 & 30 July 2016
Entry by registration
Partner: Experimenter Kolkata

and 

DELHI
on Tuesday 2 August 2016 
Venue: 125 MCM, Meher Chand Market, New Delhi at 7:00 pm
Gujral Foundation's new venue at Meherchand Market  
Topic: Functional Beauty - Design from Switzerland
Entry open to all.
Partner: Gujral Foundation

About Ariana Pradal
Ariana Pradal, trained as an industrial designer, works as a journalist and curator. She writes and works regularly for various magazines and museums in the field of design and architecture. Her articles, books and exhibitions have been printed and presented in Switzerland and abroad. www.pradal.ch

Ariana Pradal studied industrial design at the Zurich School of Art and Design, (now the Zurich University of the Arts, Zhdk). Having gained experience by working in various design offices she decided to switch to a new role within the creative sector: instead of designing objects herself, she started to write about them. She completed a two-year traineeship with Hochparterre, a Swiss journal of design and architecture, while at the same time taking courses at the Swiss School of Journalism in Lucerne. During her time at Hochparterre she wrote articles, designed exhibitions, worked on books and gave lectures - setting the course for her future career. The time was then ripe for a change of direction, working in another country and in another field: Ariana Pradal spent six months in New York with Location.Switzerland, the Swiss economic promotion body, gathering experience and awareness of the worlds of business and diplomacy.

After returning to Switzerland she spent three years working part time for the architectural journal Werk, Bauen und Wohnen, (wbw.ch). At the same time she wrote for other journals, and was commissioned by the Industrial Design section of the Zhdk to work on a project with the Pro Pueblo foundation in Ecuador. She also taught at various universities of applied sciences and sat on juries awarding diplomas. After her engagement at the architectural journal Werk, Bauen und Wohnen she worked two years as architecture critic for the newspaper Sonntag. Today she works as an independent journalist and curator in the areas of design, architecture and related disciplines. Her articles, books and exhibitions have been printed and presented in Switzerland and abroad. In addition she acts as a technical expert advising various cultural and political institutions.In 2010 she was appointed by the Swiss Federal Office of Culture for the "Mediation in Art and Architecture award 2010
"www.pradal.ch