From analog film by Cellule d’intervention Metamkine to facial tracking by Daniel Zea, live cameras by Delphine Depres, and video sampling by Nicole Lizée, the compositions of this evening all maintain a symbiotic relationship with the image. A succession of five sets, concerts and screenings, presented alternately in two rooms, punctuate this program conceived jointly by La Cave12 and Contrechamps. Two artistic video installations presented by the FMAC (Collection d’art contemporain de la Ville de Genève), as well as a bar area and an original culinary offering, will accompany you throughout the evening.

Émilien Leroy (1976, Dunkerque)
ALIAGA, 2018, vidéo, couleur, son, 16'01''

Fonds d'art contemporain et de la Ville de Genève (FMAC) Collection

A performer specialising in the sounds of ports, Émilien Leroy draws on this context with a certain fascination to construct his visual and auditory universe. Known as Feromil, he makes scrap metal sing, plays the metal detector, constructs noise textures, and roams port areas on the lookout for the sounds and tonal smells of shipyards. From these immersions, he began a collection of sound postcards in 2009, under the name ‘Sonata di porto’, and in 2012, invited to Istanbul by the Institut Français, he combined image and sound for his first film concert.
Aliaga, a Turkish port city on the Aegean Sea, served as the raw material for Émilien Leroy's first film on ship demolition in 2018. A vast visual and sound composition, this video captures the activity of a port shipyard in an industrial atmosphere, with images distorted by heat and a hypnotic soundtrack with metallic tones. For the artist, the port represents a ‘reservoir of poetry’; in Aliaga, the artist remains captivated by this ship slaughterhouse, a decaying metal cathedral that man illuminates with his blowtorch and grinder. Here, the artist is confronted with a visual and sensory abyss in the disproportion that links man to the (im)moderation of his task and the extent of the architecture to be dismantled.

Stéphane Cecconi

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Gérald Minkoff (1937-2009, Genève-Tarragona) & Muriel Olesen (1948-2020, Genève)
Baisers en avance, baisers en retard, 1976, Suisse
Vidéo, Open Reel ½’’, n/b, son, 5'

Fonds d'art contemporain de la Ville de Genève (FMAC) – Fonds Olesen-Minkoff Collection

Life and creative partners based in Geneva, Muriel Olesen (1948–2020) and Gérald Minkoff (1937–2009) pursued their joint and individual research in a transdisciplinary manner, across a wide spectrum of media – video, photography, film, mail art, performances, installations, graphic arts – confronting them, remedying them and exploring their particularities with constantly renewed audacity.

The discovery of video marked the beginning of their relationship, and the closed-circuit device – a camera connected to a cathode ray tube monitor, broadcasting the image captured live – inspired them to conduct countless experiments with feedback.

Recently revealed as part of the project to digitise the historical tapes bequeathed to the FMAC by Muriel Olesen, the piece ‘Baisers en avance, baisers en retard’ (Kisses in Advance, Kisses in Arrears) consists of a dazzling mise en abîme, where successive loops of the progressively altered electronic signal intertwine and collide with different layers of reality under the effect of delay.