At a time when visions of a prosperous collective future are struggling to take shape in the contemporary imagination, fiction and utopias are becoming essential narratives, countering the dystopias that colour our present. In the era of globalised digital industries, digital art is becoming a space for resistance, hope and new narratives.
Fictions and utopias are becoming narratives that run counter to the increasingly real dystopias of the present. Designed in collaboration with the Némo biennial at CENTQUATRE-PARIS, the Swiss Cultural Centre, the virtual platform ORBIT_E of the Musée des Beaux-Arts Le Locle – MBAL (Switzerland) and the NOVA_XX biennial of the Centre Wallonie Bruxelles (CWB), this day offers a programme of screenings, artist meetings and performances to sketch out more desirable futures.
Programme:
6pm – Round table: Nature, a utopian environment for creation
With artists from the exhibition Les illusions retrouvées at CENTQUATRE-PARIS, moderated by Gilles Alvarez, artistic director of the Némo biennial.
- Marc Lee, artist born in 1969, lives and works in Switzerland
- Phygital Studio, a company incubated at 104factory that produces works at the intersection of technology and nature, Paris
- Ismaël Joffroy Chandoutis, born in 1988, lives and works between Paris and Brussels
- NeoConsortium, a project and collective of artists created in 2014 and based in Paris
7:15 p.m. – Round table: Immaterial art in a material world
Moderated by Tadeo Kohan, curator at the Swiss Cultural Centre, Paris
- Marta Ponsa, head of artistic projects and cultural action at the Jeu de Paume, Paris
- Marlene Wenger, curator at the Haus der Elektronischen Künste, H.E.K, Basel, Switzerland
- Kika Nicolela, artist and curator for objkt.com and for the ORBIT_E 2025 capsule, Le Locle, Switzerland
- Federica Chiocchetti, director of the Musée des Beaux-Arts Le Locle, Switzerland
- Stéphanie Pécourt, director of the Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles and founder of the NOVA_XX biennial, Paris
6pm-10pm – Focus ORBIT_E:
Launched in 2022, the ORBIT_E digital platform is a virtual online extension of the MBAL that extends and complements the artistic programming presented at the museum. During this evening, the digital works from the ORBIT_E platform will be presented on screens: L’hypnose du Jardin by Lauren Huret, Decompressed Prism by Salvatore Vitale, ssloop.life by Alfatih and Doomscrolling with 5 international artists by Kika Nicolela.
9 p.m. – Relaxation performance by Lauren Huret – L’Hypnose du jardin
Created from photos of Geneva parks, modified and enhanced with AI software, this video composes a soothing artificial paradise. Between dream, hallucination and slowness, Lauren Huret offers a relaxation performance around her work, like a visual and healing hypnosis.
Free admission and registration required.
All of the information and the tickets are available on the site of the Centre culturel Suisse.
