Starting Points is an experimental composition in two parts connecting two independent but complementary artistic approaches deployed in the territory of Geneva during the Tram des Nations residency program. Alex Hanimann surveys the landscape with his cameras and adopts the posture of silent observer here and there. Nadine Schütz reveals and activates human and sensory landscapes with Human Recorder, a mobile sound recording and broadcasting device specifically designed for the occasion. For the EXPLORE Festival, the artists produced two joint works in which they create a dialogue between the visual and sound materials collected in this process.
Starting Points – The state of things
The overall scene consists of two large black and white photographs that serve as a backdrop for a series of sound boxes arranged on the ground. This scene compares images of a built, mineral and geometric urban landscape with those of an untamed and abundant nature, apparently wild. The sound boxes reproduce the exact grid pattern of the wells forming the fountain in the Place des Nations, and make audible “sound infrastructures” that had never been heard before, both urban and organic, which disrupt the apparent heterogeneity of the staging.
Starting Points – The state of places
The film is composed of static sequences captured from different landscapes between the Place des Nations and Grand-Saconnex, over which the people inhabiting them give testimony in their own individual ways.
© Alex Hanimann & Nadine Schütz