A group of people who meet weekly to draw together spent four afternoons exploring the exhibition Cantonale Berne Jura 2023 and creating their own personal commentary on the works on display.

During the first visit, one of the participants spontaneously invented new titles for some of the works and made notes in her booklet with the exhibition texts. Over the course of the following meetings, the participants followed her example and added their comments, side-swipes, praise, questions, humour, poetry and winks to her booklet. These personal notes were available to visitors as an annotated booklet for their visit to the exhibition.

In spring 2023, the project “Commenting on art” brought together teachers from Biel/Bienne and the Seeland region. In several meetings, they discussed the exhibition Flüchtig by Daniel Pommereulle and developed their own personal commentary. The idea of bringing objects from home that the participants associated with works of art from the exhibition became the starting point for their personal commentary: the objects were photographed from different perspectives and lined up on film. The resulting short film plays with ephemerality and associates everyday objects with works from the exhibition.

This year, the project “Commenting on art” brought together participants from different German courses in Biel. In several meetings, they exchanged views on the exhibition Cantonale Berne Jura and formulated questions about the artworks for the artists. The art commentary is made up of the questions collected and answers received and is intended to enrich the Kunsthaus visit for all visitors.

The project «Commenting on art» of 2020 brought together women who dance or are interested in movement. They reacted performatively to the exhibition Bodytronic by France-Lise McGurn, which resulted in a video consisting of 5 sequences, which was projected on a big screen directly in the exhibition space – behind a curtain.

Twelve video sequences were created in the project «Commenting on art». They show sign poetry: poetic gestures that cannot be translated literally. The deaf and hearing-impaired participants in the project «Commenting on art» developed these as a reaction to individual artworks in the exhibition MELANIE MANCHOT Open Stage. Back Stage.

With this sign poetry, the participants shared their personal view of the artworks with all visitors to the website and the exhibition. You can view the individual clips directly in front of the corresponding artworks on your smartphone or tablet. As a kind of interpretation the videos might enrich your own experience of the exhibition.

In an intergenerational dialogue, senior citizens of the Residenz au Lac Biel met students as well as apprentices of the BFF Bern. They talked about time and age in the exhibition ZEITSPUREN – THE POWER OF NOW. Their reflections and philosophical questions on the subject of time and age, together with photos from the meetings, were then available to all visitors as postcards in the foyer.

A group from the senior citizens’ café La Fabrik in Mett dealt with music and visual arts in the exhibition EXTENDED COMPOSITIONS. The reactions, questions and ideas of the participants were recorded by microphone and offered to all visitors in an art-audio feature in the exhibition itself.

Participants of the German course at the Autonomous School Biel reacted to the exhibitions Susan Morris and Katie Paterson. In the Kunsthaus they spent some time in front of the works in the exhibitions and tried to put their impressions into words. From this, the art commentary emerged as a kind of vocabulary. The words and short sentences in German, French, Persian, English and Tigrinya suggested various interpretations of the exhibited works.

In 2015 djembe students reacted to the exhibitions Viviane Sassen and Michael Sailstorfer. Their art commentary manifested itself in the form of a soundtrack of rhythmic and verbal commentaries, which were made available to visitors to the Kunsthaus with portable audio players and headphones.