19.05 20.08 2017 Yael Bartana TREMBLİ NG Tİ MES Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts Lausanne www.mcba.ch Yael Bartana, Wild Seeds (in America), 2008, performance, NYC PRESS RELEASE MUSÉE CANTONAL DES BEAUX-ARTS DE LAUSANNE
19 May 20 August 2017 YAEL BARTANA. Trembling Times & FRANÇOIS BOCION. Looking at the Lake You are cordially invited to attend the press conference on Thursday 18 May 2017 at 11am Yael Bartana will be present Opening reception Thursday 18 May 2017 at 6.30 pm Press officer Loïse Cuendet, loise.cuendet@vd.ch Tel. direct: +41 (0)21 316 34 48 Press images: http://bit.ly/2luzq33 Address Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne Palais de Rumine, place de la Riponne 6 CH-1014 Lausanne Tel.: +41 (0)21 316 34 45 info.beaux-arts@vd.ch www.mcba.ch Free admission Opening hours Tues - Wed - Fri: 11 am 6 pm Thurs: 11 am 8 pm Sat - Sun: 11 am 5 pm Closed Monday 25 May, 5 June, 1 August: 11 am 5 pm Public transport Metro M2: Riponne Maurice Béjart Bus 1, 2: Rue Neuve Bus 7, 8: Riponne Maurice Béjart
YAEL BARTANA. Trembling Times 19.5 20.8.2017 Yael Bartana explores individual identities and collective memory via video, film and photography. For more than fifteen years now she has been building up a prolific oeuvre oscillating between documentary, fictionalised versions of historical events, and political utopias. From her earliest videos (Profile, 2000; Trembling Time, 2001) to such recent pieces as True Finn (2014), and including the monumental trilogy And Europe Will Be Stunned (2007 2011), with which she represented Poland at the 54 th Venice Biennale, Bartana s work betrays a fascination with ceremonies and social rituals, and with the role of the latter in the shaping of communities and individuals. Yet these works are at a far remove from any direct documentary mode; modelled on the aesthetics of ritual, they are above all performative creations the audience is won over by without realising it. Her films point up the fact that cinema is itself a ritual and that the camera, perhaps better than anything else, imitates ritual in its capacity to fetishise, to seduce and to draw us into the ceremony we are witnessing. Trembling Times, the artist s first solo exhibition in Switzerland, is structured around the trilogy And Europe Will Be Stunned, spotlighting the tensions that pervade Bartana s oeuvre: between reality and fiction, pathos and irony, hope and despair, return and departure, nostalgia and the quest for a break with the past. Room 1_From documentary to mise en scène Profile, 2000 In her very first ventures Yael Bartana used her video camera to recreate precise, pareddown images of the world with their titles as sole commentary. While these works capture a reality that seems to yield itself as is, they nonetheless exploit the medium s possibilities framing, slow motion, montage, sound cuts to «fictionalise» that reality. In Profile she focuses on military service in Israel compulsory for both men and women and on the way collective experiences and ritualised acts shore up national identity. Trembling Time, 2001 Trembling Time documents Yom HaZikaron, «Memorial Day for the Fallen Soldiers», and the minute s silence observed in commemoration of those who have died in Israel s wars. Filmed in high angle shot from a freeway bridge in Tel Aviv, Trembling Time shows the stream of traffic slowing down and finally coming to a complete halt for the minute s silence. Through some strange kind of contagion the slowdown takes over the medium as well: the minute together with the sound of the accompanying siren lasts in fact six minutes. Yael Bartana. Trembling Times Press release Page 3
The video seems to hesitate between an attitude of solemn meditation and a parody of a ritual every driver, whether he sees it as meaningful or not, has to submit to or face a collision. Wild Seeds, 2005 In 2005 Bartana replaced her documentary approach with mise en scène, staging invented scenarios and recycling familiar imagery so as to generate narratives with a historical dimension. Wild Seeds does not document a situation it creates one. On the hill of Gilad, on the West Bank, a group of young people simulate the «evacuation of the Gilad settlement» in the form of a game devised by Israeli activists and based on an actual confrontation between the army and Jewish settlers. Playfulness and laughter rule, but the translations on a second screen signal graver, more paradoxical concerns: «A Jew does not deport a Jew» and «Where have you left your conscience?» The myth of the state as the guarantor of the safety of each citizen is challenged by the myth of self-defence, and as we observe these teenagers we observe the rebirth of that myth. Thus a mere game conjures up an experience with implications reaching far beyond the individual. Room 2_The «Polish Trilogy» And Europe Will Be Stunned: Mary Koszmary (Nightmares), 2007 And Europe Will Be Stunned offers an account of the imaginary activities of the Jewish Renaissance Movement in Poland (JRMiP). In the first film of the trilogy, Mary Koszmary (Nightmares), left-wing activist Sławomir Sierakowski appeals to 3.3 million Jews to return to Poland so that the two peoples can join forces to overcome the traumatic heritage of anti-semitism and the Holocaust and create a new, flourishing society. In formal terms Mary Koszmary presents an analogy with the Zionist film propaganda of the 1930s and, paradoxically, with the visual repertoire of Nazi propaganda cinema. The words accompanying the images «Jews, fellow countrymen, people, peeeeople!», «A new Europe», «A bettered world!» seem strangely familiar and thus all the more disturbing for Jews and non-jews alike; not only because of the horrors of the past, but also because of the present: because of the explicit racism and xenophobia everywhere in Europe today, whether directed at Jews, Muslims or refugees. And Europe Will Be Stunned: Mur i Wieża (Wall and Tower), 2009 In Mur i Wieża (Wall and Tower), the second segment of Bartana s trilogy, the men, women and children who have answered Sierakowski s call are seen building Poland s first kibbutz in the former Jewish quarter of Warsaw, which was turned into a ghetto during the Second World War. Irony and nostalgia blend in this meticulous cinematic imitation of the early films of the halutzim («pioneers» in Hebrew) building the first kibbutzim in British Mandate Palestine in the late 1930s. Once again Bartana plays on reversals and double meanings, both historical and iconographic: the barbed wire around the kibbutz
in Mur i Wieża harks back to the concentration camps but also to the Occupied Territories and the checkpoints, while the Zionist imagery speaks of Israel-Palestine but also, here, of Poland-Israel and, therefore, of Israel and Europe. And Europe Will Be Stunned: Zamach (Assassination), 2011 Zamach (Assassination), the third segment, is entirely devoted to the funeral of Sławomir Sierakowski, assassinated for having tried to rethink the nation-state and daring to imagine the possibility of a «return» not only of the ghosts of the past, but also of a very real group of people. Once dead Sierakowski is given hero status and crowds flock to the ceremony. Among those who speak are persons who are fictional and, in three cases, real. It is through this symbolic death that the political movement finds unity, in the hope that it will become a concrete project and be implemented: «Join us, and Europe will be stunned.» Fusing historical reality and political imagination, Bartana has created something profoundly troubling. Room 3_National identities today True Finn, 2014 In True Finn, Bartana explores the mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion at work in the shaping of national identities, but in a context totally different from that of her earlier works and in a country whose heritage she does not share. Shot in Finland, True Finn, in a kind of reality TV parody, brings together eight residents of different ethnic, religious and political backgrounds in a house lost in a snowbound forest. They live together for a week, discussing and redefining «Finland»: something neither totally fictive nor totally real, a space made of possibilities given concrete form by the reality of what each person says. Exhibition curator Nicole Schweizer, curator Yael Bartana. Trembling Times Press release Page 5
Publication Yael Bartana Bilingual monograph (French/English) edited by Nicole Schweizer. Contributions by Emmanuel Alloa, Nora Alter, Juli Carson and Gil Z. Hochberg, as well as an interview with the artist by Erika Balsom. Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne & JRP Ringier, Zurich, 2017 Excerpt Yael Bartana and Erika Balsom in Conversation Erika Balsom : Now that some years have passed since the completion of the trilogy, how do you reflect on its reception? Yael Bartana : For me, the most successful element of the trilogy had to do with how people could connect to it on an emotional level. That was a gift. The best comment I ever heard came from an older man I met in Jerusalem last year. He saw the trilogy in Venice. His wife told me that when he came out of the Polish pavilion where the work was shown he said, «That was the best documentary I ve ever seen!» I found it so amazing that he really believed it was true. That s a mark of success for a fictional story. It has to do with the work s proximity to reality. If you search for the first part, Mary Koszmary (Nightmares) (2007) on YouTube, you ll find the most racist reactions. There is a video of an interview I gave at the Louisiana Museum and the comments from Polish people are unbelievable. They want to eliminate me from the world. They are the most violent and racist comments I ve ever read against me. I can t do much about it. But there is hate toward this project as much as there is appreciation and acceptance. It s really far-fetched. Some Israelis that I met after completing the first two parts of the trilogy were so upset. Erika Balsom : In his imagination, it s as if you were proposing another forced displacement, the inauguration of a new diaspora. Yael Bartana : Yes. When I first thought about the idea, it really came from my heart. I was visiting all these towns and villages in Poland where Jews had lived. It started to provoke my imagination. How could we possibly come back? I was so clueless in the sense that I didn t know a lot of Polish people at that time, so I didn t know how «hot» the discourse was. The young, post-communist intelligentsia in Poland were so obsessed with a Jewish community they never experienced and learned about only after the end of Communism. For them it was something so new. It was so exciting for me to meet Sławomir Sierakowski. Back then in 2006, he was a young man, 26 years old, who was trying to establish a new left wing in Poland. He d never really lived with any Jews, but he understood very quickly what kind of project this was and what it could bring to the discourse in Poland. We screened the trilogy in many villages later, not just in museums.
Short biography Born 1970 in Kfar Yehezkel, Israel, Yael Bartana currently lives and works in Berlin, Tel Aviv and Amsterdam. She studied at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem (1992 1996), the School of Visual Arts, New York (1999) and the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam (2000 2001). The artist gained international recognition among others at Manifesta 4 (2002), the 9 th Istanbul Biennale (2005), the São Paulo Biennale (2006, 2010, 2015), Documenta 12 in Kassel (2007), the 54 th Venice Biennale (2011) where she represented Poland and the 7 th Berlin Biennale (2012). Bartana has had major solo shows, among others at the Banff Centre, Alberta (2016), the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2014), Secession, Vienna (2012), the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk (2012), the Tel Aviv Museum of Art (2012), the Moderna Museet, Malmö (2010), MoMA PS1, New York (2008) and the Kunstverein Hamburg (2006). This summer, she is invited by the Manchester International Festival for her performance What If Women Ruled the World. Recent group exhibitions include The Body Extended: Sculpture and Prosthetic, Henry Moore Institute, Leeds (2016), Visions of Place: Complex Geographies in Contemporary Israeli Art, Towson University, Maryland, & Rutgers University, New Jersey (2015 2016), La disparition des lucioles, La Collection Lambert, Avignon (2014), Recent Video From Israel, Tate Modern, London (2010), Acting Out: Social Experiments in Video, ICA, Boston (2009), and The Anxious: Five Artists Under the Pressure of War, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2008). Yael Bartana. Trembling Times Press release Page 7
FRANÇOIS BOCION. Looking at the Lake 19.5 20.8.2017, room 6 Mcb-a is home to the largest existing public collection of works by François Bocion (1828 1890): some 180 in all. As a prelude to the future presentation of its permanent collection on the new Platforme10 site, the museum is showing about fifteen paintings that point up the dominant role of Lake Geneva in the oeuvre of this artist from the Vaud canton. After training under Louis-Aimé Grosclaude and Charles Gleyre in Paris between 1845 and 1848, François Bocion returned to his native Lausanne. The mixed bag of his beginnings history paintings, landscapes, portraits, animal scenes, and caricatures for the satirical paper La Guêpe was followed in the 1860s by a marked turn towards landscape, and notably that of the Swiss and French shores of Lake Geneva. Part of the plein-air movement then taking hold in Europe, Bocion was stylistically close to the Pre-Impressionists. Throughout his career he made numerous studies on paper, card or canvas, some of them with dates and locations, that testify to his special fondness for regular outdoor work sessions. In the nineteenth century Lake Geneva was still mainly peopled by workers engaged in fishing, hunting and transporting merchandise. In compositions mingling genre scenes and landscape Bocion observes these different métiers, setting the human figure or, often, a group in the foreground. Boating for pleasure was not widespread at the time and was restricted to a privileged few that included the artist s family. However, increasing recourse to steamboats by the well-off was leading to a growth in tourism and Bocion s account of these changes makes his oeuvre an authentic chronicle of the period. The 1880s saw him evolving towards landscape in its own right. Increasingly rare, the human figure was sometimes reduced to a mere compositional element, like his small boats and distant houses. In response to criticism of his colours too vivid, too purple he opted for a lighter palette and simpler forms, with pencil marks now showing through more diluted oil paint and revealing the preliminary sketch beneath. Initially a setting, the lake had become the principal subject, confirming Bocion s reputation as the «incomparable painter of Lake Geneva». Exhibition curator Camille de Alencastro, assistant curator Room 6: While not a literal full-scale model, this room inside the Palais de Rumine is exactly the same height 4.5 metres as the exhibition spaces on the first floor of the museum to come, and has been constructed using the materials chosen by Estudio Barrozzi Veiga (EBV), architects of the future mcb-a. The room provides an opportunity to put works on show while testing the parameters of the planned new spaces; a chance to try out tomorrow s museum today, not virtually but under actual working and viewing conditions. François Bocion. Looking at the Lake Press release Page 8
EVENTS AND ACTIVITIES Guided tours of the Yael Bartana exhibition Thursday 15 June at 6.30 pm - Sunday 25 June at 3 pm - Thursday 10 August at 6.30 pm - Sunday 20 August at 3 pm Tours with a snack A guided tour (45 mins) followed by a snack Thursday 8 June at 12.30 pm, François Bocion exhibition Thursday 29 June and 27 July at 12.30 pm, Yael Bartana exhibition Price : CHF 10., snack included Advance booking required Perspectives and points of view In association with the University of Lausanne: Students from the university s Centre d études cinématographiques answer visitors questions and propose free discussion regarding the work of Yael Bartana. Sunday 18 June, 2 5 pm Tell me what you see Screening of movies directed by cinema students of ECAL/École cantonale d art de Lausanne, inspired by the work of Yael Bartana. Luc Andrié and Lionel Baier will be present. Friday 30 June, 2 5 pm YOUNG VISITORS Passeport vacances workshop Video art: reality or fiction? Three days of video-making inspired by the exhibition: write a scenario together, then make a short video offering experience in filming and acting. With Sandrine Normand (director) and Gisèle Comte (museum educator) Wednesday 5 Friday 7 July, 10 am 4 pm Ages 9 14. Advance booking required: www.apvrl.ch Cabane cantonale des Beaux-Arts Activities for all, based on the exhibition and the museum s collection, in the new space devoted to the museum education activities. Discovery-booklet Activities in the exhibition Age 9 and up, free
PRESS IMAGES Download link: http://bit.ly/2luzq33 FRANÇOIS BOCION. Looking at the Lake Barque à Ouchy, 1890. Oil on canvas, 78 x 150 cm. Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne. Gift of Mrs François Bocion, widow of the artist, and their children, on the occasion of the Canton de Vaud Centenary, 1903 À Ouchy en 1874, 1874. Oil on canvas, 34 x 61 cm. Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne. Acquired 1941 Filets et pêcheurs, 1877. Oil on canvas, 61 x 50 cm. Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne. Acquired 1913 Lac au crépuscule, no date. Oil on canvas mounted on cardboard, 19,3 x 27,8 cm. Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne Bocion et sa famille à la pêche, 1877. Oil on wood panel, 32 x 48,5 cm. Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne. Acquired 1939
PRESS IMAGES Download link: http://bit.ly/2luzq33 YAEL BARTANA.Trembling Times Trembling Time, 2001. One channel video and sound installation, 6:20 min. Courtesy of Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam, and Sommer Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv Profile, 2000. One channel video and sound installation, 3 min. Courtesy of Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam, and Sommer Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv Wild Seeds, 2005. Two channel video and sound installation, 6:40 min. Courtesy of Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam, and Sommer Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv And Europe Will Be Stunned: Mur i Wieża (Wall and Towers), 2009. One channel video and sound installation, 15 min. Courtesy of Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam, and Sommer Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv True Finn Tosi suomalainen, 2014. One channel video and sound installation, 50 min. Courtesy of Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam, Sommer Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv, and Petzel Gallery, New York Yael Bartana Photo : Birgit Kaulfuß, 2017
PRESS IMAGES Download link: http://bit.ly/2luzq33 YAEL BARTANA.Trembling Times And Europe Will Be Stunned: Mary Koszmary (Nightmares), 2007. One channel video and sound installation, 11 min. Courtesy of Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam and Foksal Gallery Foundation, Warsaw And Europe Will Be Stunned: Zamach (Assassination), 2011 One channel video and sound installation, 35 min. Courtesy of Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam, and Sommer Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv And Europe Will Be Stunned, 2010 Neon light, 270 x 192 cm Courtesy of Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam, and Sommer Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv