AGENDA

Tour in German of the exhibitions Susan Hiller – Divided Self and Denis Savary – Nashville, with Selma Meuli, curator KBCB.

Art at noon – At the table with the Kunsthaus team (de+fr): Short guided tour through the exhibition SUSAN HILLER – Divided Self followed by a lunch snack from Batavia, CHF 15.- (regular admission without snack), registration until the day before: info@kbcb.ch

Join us for a special audiovisual performance by Janis Polar, exploring the entanglement of scientific exploration, industrial ambition, and geopolitical power in Antarctica. stories of 90°S empir[e]icism, #3 reworks historical 16mm footage of European expeditions from the 1940s–1960s, layering them with contemporary material to question the narratives of conquest and extraction that shaped this remote landscape.

During her residency in August 2024 Ieva was interested in exploring the place of endemic and invasive plant species in Biel, their traditional roles as well as their historical, environmental and urban implications. Photoforum invited her back to present the results of her residency in a small presentation. Ieva Saudargaitė Douaihi is a multi-disciplinary artist working with photography, installation and other media. Her work is influenced by her background in architecture, a profound fascination with the built and natural environments as well as different layers of street life. Her practice seeks to uncover the layers of history, culture, ecology and experiences embedded within.

In Antarctic Archives, Janis Polar examines how Antarctica is constructed as the "last untouched natural frontier" - only to break with this image. His work questions the violence of discovery and the geopolitical, ecological and colonial narratives that characterise this continent. In doing so, he sheds light on the role of technological and cultural constructions and the power of images in the perception of natural spaces. Antarctic Archives experiments artistically with entangled interstices, gaps and ambivalences in the writing of history, the present and the future and asks: What are we still measuring the world for?

Cécile Monnier's work questions the ways in which human practices and personal memories shape our relationship with ‘nature’.  By combining photography and installation, she is looking for new ways of learning to see living things and rethinking our relationship with them. The exhibition presents two works that explore Cécile Monnier's personal and artistic reflections on the relationship between man and nature. In ‘Tout est fichu comme un sandwich à la soupe’, she looks at the practice of fly fishing - a symbolic interface between humans and their environment. She is interested in the way in which anglers care for the habitat that is the river, while at the same time disturbing it. Photographs of hand-made artificial flies, combined with a video installation, question the aesthetics and ambivalence of an activity that connects humans to a habitat and an ecosystem, but also reveals the power relationships and dependencies that are established between them.

The video artist, sculptor and scenographer Denis Savary (*1981) has been developing a simultaneously challenging and playful oeuvre full of references of all kinds over the last twenty years. Each of his exhibitions spins its own story, in which the most banal everyday life and the most insignificant detail meet fantastic narratives and grandiose images. The large Salle Poma offers space and opportunity to present existing and newly created sculptures, as well as a new film in a own scenographic arrangement.

Born in the USA, artist Susan Hiller (1940-2019) studied anthropology before moving to London in 1970. There she created a body of work of formal diversity, which she herself described as being at the interface between conceptual art and the paranormal. Over the course of her 50-year career, Hiller explored automatic writing, dreams, postcards, television programmes, magic, extraterrestrial encounters and other folk practices. Her way of working is guided by the search for alternatives to the supposedly objective neutrality demanded by science.

Ateliers bilingues pour les enfants de 5 à 11 ans. Nombre de participant·e·s limité, inscription recommandée jusqu'au vendredi matin précédent chaque rencontre

Photoforum is delighted to once again host the Biel/Bienne Festival of Photography (3.5 - 25.5.2025) in our spaces at Pasquart. The festival’s 28th edition, Horizons, explores how landscapes are perceived, used, and represented. Whether urban, forested, or industrial, landscapes are not just physical spaces but cultural and emotional constructs. They are described, mapped, photographed, and interpreted. This year’s edition of the festival presents new perspectives on landscapes and their depiction.