Adrenaline junkie in the making?

On Friday myself and Chelsea took the train to a little town called Gordola in the Italian canton of Switzerland. Why? Because on Saturday, we did this……….

First ever bungee jump! And not just any old jump, this famous jump from Goldeneye film. It was an exhilarating experience to say the least. 

Easter travels

Last Saturday Ash flew over to Basel where I met him and we spent a few days exploring. The airport is actually in France, but it only takes a ten minute bus journey to cross back over the border into Switzerland. Whilst there we paid a visit to the Jean Tinguely museum, where I spent a good twenty minutes looking at one piece in particular ‘Lola T. 180 - Mémorial pour Joakim B.’ which was made in dedication to his Formula 1 racing friend who was killed in a race. The piece is made from two cars and has been made to take the form of a winged altar, complete with a cow’s skull in the middle. It was simultaneously haunting and beautiful. What made this place unique was that all the pieces displayed in the museum were able to move, each piece controlled by a mechanism which the public were allowed to switch on, and watch. 

We also visited the Kunstmuseum which was divided into three separate building across the city, one of which was home to a few works by Andy Warhol. All the exhibitions forbade the use of photography but we managed to find a little loophole in the corridor of one; there was a security camera and screen up on the wall,  and funnily through the flicking of different cameras in the building you could potentially view every art piece in there without going to find it in person! Of course we did though…

The following days consisted of going to the zoo and general exploring, then back to Sierre for the rest of the week. On the Friday we took a day trip to Montreux, where a comic-con event was being held, and I attended a talk with an actor from the tv show House of Cards! On the Saturday Ash left and then my friend Danielle came to visit from the UK! My last visitor, just in time for the Easter holiday. I went to meet her in Geneva, and we spent the majority of the week sunbathing and exploring. I took her up to Crêt du Midi, where Ash and I had visited over christmas, and then we took a little detour to Sion on the train where we hiked up to the Tourbillon castle.

Collage pieces

Some pieces I have recently been working on in Movimax. I feel as though here I somehow am finding more interesting material than I would in Coventry. Possibly because the things I find here instantly come with a different aura and feeling, purely because they’re from an entirely different country which I have no previous history with. I have pieced them together with mainly aesthetic in mind but also individual narratives I associate with the images.

April fools

To begin the month, we had the workshop with Kris Vleeschouwer. The week was based around involving interactivity within our own work and we were given several presentations by various other artists invited by Kris. I had meetings with Beate Engel and Navid Tschopp to discuss my project and the theme of interactivity, and played with the idea of painting over old vinyl discs to make them unrecognisable and place them on a wine bottle stand, so that it made an alternate way to select music without knowing what it is you’ll be playing, whilst involving the relationship between music and alcohol with the wine stand. At the end of the week we were to present our ideas, but not before this delicious picnic we had outside on the terrace at school!

In other news, the photos that my housemate Jasmine took for International Women’s Day were displayed in Bolivia! Here they are being put up. My portrait is top left.

Oh mon dieu

i’ve recently began to watch Friends in french, to help with my learning of the language. I’m very familiar with the dialogue in the show (sad I know) so I find that I already know what they’re saying, but simultaneously now learning the french version too.

La Fête Du Slip

I’d heard about a weekend long festival in Lausanne at the beginning of March, which featured artistic films and videos, and so I planned to check it out, however, during my search for more information I found that it was actually a festival of sexuality, and the film events that I had heard about were just a scratch on the surface! There are several venues across the city in which its held, and the one we visited at the Arsenic Theatre hosted pornography competitions, where throughout the day/night they would show screenings of several films to an audience and then we would vote at the end which film we preferred. Chelsea and I only made it in to one screening however as it was so busy! Afterwards we went to Le Bourg further up in town, which was the resident music venue for the night. It was an experience like none other, and would definitely like to go next year if possible.

International Women’s Day

My friend Jasmine, who also lives at the Auberge, was asked by someone back in her home of Argentina to photograph a women’s march in Switzerland. But, as it was highly unlikely that anything on that scale would be happening in our little town, or anywhere nearby, she resorted to the idea of taking photos of women she lives with - including me - and women on her course. She had left her trusty polaroid camera in Berlin, but luckily I had bought one and it had just been delivered that week, and lent it to her. Here is one of the photos she took with it

2nd semester + reflection

My visit back home was wonderful but strange, and has helped to realise how far I much I have progressed in terms of my work ethic and other personal attributes. As i mentioned in an earlier post, being a step back from everyone here due to the language barrier, it has in fact benefitted, and not solely hindered my experience on the course here, and i’m hoping that with my new found determination to go above and beyond to achieve, I will succeed even further at Coventry when I return. This year out has also offered great inspiration concerning my dissertation - which i plan to begin researching in the summer when I return home - and also has broadened my desire to work in other mediums and experiment with new processes. I want to make full use of all facilities that are available back in Coventry, as sometimes I am restricted from doing so here due to the communication difficulty.

My studio here is excellent, as it’s so close I often spend full days there, and wish that I had spent more time at the studio I had last year. I’ll certainly be spending plenty of time there next year, and I plan to try and get the same space which was given to me last year. Because of the fact that I’ve been learning french here, it has tempted me to possibly choose it for my addvantage class as its seems like a bit of a waste to not continue, but I am still leaning towards my original choice of Creative Networking Skills.

Right now I’m also enjoying creating my work a lot more, again despite being limited sometimes as to what materials i can/cannot afford. For this next semester I’m shifting away from the topic of language and instead focusing on a narrative of objects and photos that I have found and created in my time here, and combining old and new matter together.

Snow: it came, it saw, it stuck

(and probably will be for a very long time. I read an article that stated this winter had a very mild start, by Swiss standards, so who knows when we’ll get our next glimpse of sunlight.)

Only a few days after Ash left, I woke up in the morning to pure white landscape outside. I went for a walk along the lake which had frozen over, leaving the ducks huddled around the one small part that was still water. The rest of this month involved very few trips, as there was much to be done at Movimax, arranging pieces around the room which included a lot of hammering much to everyone’s annoyance.

Jury went surprisingly well, considering me and Chelsea had both followed Coventry’s assessment method and laid out every single piece of work to be viewed, when in fact it turned out that they would have preferred a more narrowed down selection of our work. The work I had made using old vinyl cases, and some other collage pieces caught most of the jury’s eyes, rendering a lot of the other work i had produced pretty useless - but coincidentally the work they commented on happened to be more in the direction that i wanted to continue in! We traipsed around to some other juries of people in our class, ones of which was held in a huge studio room with at least thirty people in there! The guy presenting his work, Diego, pulled it off well though. 

Annoyingly we discovered that there was another place to present work, a huge warehouse type building called USEGO, about a 5-10 minute walk from Movimax. It was terribly cold in there, I felt you must catch frostbite whilst you’re installing your work! I hope to possibly present there for next jury in June, depending on what work I create, and it will hopefully be warmer too.

We had a party that night at the Auberge to celebrate the end of the semester, and Chelsea and I made cake! Two, in fact! Although i did almost set fire to the second one. The next few days were basically just recovery I think. On the Saturday the 28th there was an open day for the school, free for hopeful students/current students and their families to look around. I was surprised when I received a message saying that my painting tutor had ‘stolen’ two of my works to put up for the open day exhibition! My friend Vera kindly put them up for me, as I had booked to fly home to the UK that weekend, as some high altitude relief from the stress of the past few weeks. Also I haven’t been home in five months and was in desperate need of a wetherspoons.

Jury is coming

The word jury just makes it seem like the most daunting assessment deadline ever. I somehow managed to stick to my proposed project and have been continuing with the language exploration, mainly through portraiture, but have been trying to expand into more installation-type pieces, and even tried some glass cutting to make my huge mirror into smaller sizes, which kind of went well.

I have compiled a portfolio of my work for this project here

I also have a couple of exams to take, which is different to Coventry! One is for my Contemporary Art class and the other for my Art History. Feeling slightly anxious about them as most of the papers we have been given to revise on are in French. 

Some experimental pieces from the studio, making use of the old vinyl covers that i’ve collected. 

A British Spaniard in the Swiss Alps

What a concoction. Well it made for an exciting trip, Ash came to spend Christmas and New Year’s here, much to the disappointment of our families. Including us there was 9 of us still left in the inn, so we had an amazing dinner on Christmas Eve, and I even contributed! (and no, not just crisps this time) We both set about tackling the challenge of making a nut roast which took about 5 hours prep time and then an hour in the oven - but it was worth it! It now has its place in the Inn’s communal recipe book. Christmas day was spent recovering from all that was eaten the night before…

During the week before New Year’s we took a trip to Bern and exhausted it of all its galleries and museums (the ones which were free or reasonably priced that is) we visited the resident Kunstmuseum, The Kunsthalle, The Zentrum Paul Klee, as well as numerous other smaller galleries. In the Kunsthalle I was surprised to find works by two of my tutors from school!

Later in the week we went to explore up the heights up the other side of the valley, which required two cable car trips up to the top point of the mountain called Crêt du Midi, from which you could walk further along to other peaks but the snow up there was a good few feet deep. Whilst we were up there, dozens of paragliders were taking off from the edge near the restaurant, filling the sky with their array of colourful sails.

We spent a fair bit of time in my studio in Movimax, doing some work for my upcoming Juries at the end of January

SNOW

Why oh why hadn’t I done this earlier. We got the bus up to Crans Montana, which is basically Sierre but more wooden and higher above sea level. It was unbelievably picturesque, i must have taken at least 50 photos in the first hour or two, before my phone died. It didn’t end there! Next step was the cable car up to Plaine Morte, the highest point, costing a full 30.- (it was worth it though).

At the top we were greeted by a menu of various fondues, 30.- as well, but we couldn’t decide if that was worth it so the cheese was left for the time being. I think the immensity of the height you’re at in the cable car only really hits you on the way back down. The whole experience was just completely surreal 100000/10

Sound workshop photos

Exposition !

On Tuesday (29th) we went to Yverdon-les-bains to take part in a sound workshop led by the school, and were booked to stay in the Hôtel de la Source for the whole week, the breakfast oh my, I think I may have eaten well over my fair share of croissants… Me and Chels were kitted out with the sofa bed, right next to the kitchen, sharing with two other girls, and i swear every channel on the tv was broadcasting I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, much to my horror. The first couple of days were spent wandering around the city - my plan for the workshop was to focus on the water systems within the area - so I followed rivers or streams that I came across, and luckily one of the rivers leading into Lake Neuchâtel had frozen in parts at its banks, and so i was there for a good half hour playing and poking away at the ice trying to see what unusual sounds may occur. Further down to the lake there was some nice sloshy/bubbly noises being made naturally. 

The second night there we went to the infamous thermal baths, coincidentally located at another hotel 2 minutes around the corner. It felt like we were cheating on our hotel, but the baths were amazing… the Thursday consisted of editing the sounds together and figuring out how to place our speakers in the space we’d chosen. Our ideas ended up working pretty well together and we played it numerous times throughout the night, and there was a pretty decent turn out from visitors! About an hour prior to the opening we all went out in to the town square to hand out some more flyers, and lo and behold, the local christmas market had just opened, so there were plenty of people to entice, that is however until an ice sculptor caught everyone’s attention and drowned out any nearby conversations. The final exposition was a success! Complete with vin chaud.

From the exposition at Topic in Geneva (i’m in the grey fluffy hoody scratching away for eternity)

I need a pedometer

Last Saturday I finally went to Geneva! This time the city part, not just the airport. I pre-planned my trip on google maps, starring all the interesting looking places, which i’ve been doing a lot (thankyou google) and managed to make my way to the majority of them. At one point i stumbled across the Plainpalais flea market, which was accompanied by a circus that was either opening up or closing down. Stall after stall of junk and goodies and i came away with nothing. How terrible 

I visited the Fonds municipal d'art contemporain (FMAC) (or Le Commun?? i can’t quite figure out which is the correct name) nearby, where I saw the works of the winners of the Kiefer Hablitzel Prize. There was some fantastic work here and the one i found pretty mesmerizing was Chloé Delarue’s installation ‘TAFAA - DOUBLE PEEP AREA / IN SOLD WE ARE’

Later i visited the gallery Artveras in the old town part of the city, near the cathedral, which held an exposition titled ‘Red Desert’ covering themes of the many issues in todays society. Here is John Isaac’s ‘What lies behind what lies before’. I think i have a thing for fluorescent lighting tubes. To me these pieces portray a sense of nostalgia and longing, the neon lighting being something associated with retro bars and clubs and here are used for something almost quite the opposite. I would love to begin involving this material in my own work

Other places i visited included the resident Natural history museum, which was home to Big Al 2, the Allosaurus skeleton discovered after the original Big Al which I’d seen in Berlin earlier this year! The Reformation Wall was another, situated in the grounds of the university, and was pretty intimidating, especially the main five metre tall figures carved into the wall’s centre.

Later in the evening I went to Topic to see an expostion created by Lora and an ex-masters student of ECAV; Erika Pirl. it was a great night! Lora’s piece turned out to be very interactive as we found out after five minutes of wondering what to do with it. The idea was to scrape away at the silver coverings, like on a lottery scratchcard, until words were revealed underneath. Took a lot of muscle

Class update

I’ve been attending an InDesign class every Thursday morning for the past month or so, specifically catered for us two english folk, as the normal class is taught in French. We’ve mainly been learning about how to begin layouts for books, adding images, creating the correct guidelines, using all the tools (and learning a bit of french as we go along). Last lesson we finished making the leaflet about our chosen artist, which we have now printed as a template and must cut out.

In french class we’ve been given exercise books to help us learn at home alongside duolingo, but in class so far we’ve mainly just been learning the terms for other countries and nationalities. I’m still on a very basic understanding

For our History and Theory of video lecture on Tuesday, we’ve been given an assignment to write an analytical piece on a video/film of our choice. I think it must be art related though, I doubt something like Shrek is permissible. I chose Mark Leckey’s ‘Dream English Kid 1964 - 1999 AD’ which i’d seen earlier this year at the Liverpool Biennial. For our other classes, we must also write a piece for Philosophy based on the relation between art and history, then in our contemporary art class and history art class we will eventually be taking tests in January i think, to test our knowledge.

National hummus shortage

Seriously. Nowhere has had hummus in stock for weeks. We kind of had a spontaneous Inn film night on sunday, watching The Mummy and realising how awful the graphics/cgi were. Monday was back to same old 9-6 lectures, but afterwards we went down into the town to explore the ‘Foire de Ste Catherine’ (a fair celebrating St catherine). we had looked round some of the stalls on our lunch break, which consisted of speciality foods/sweets, clothes and other items. We had a taste of all the free samples we could, especially nougat, which i then went on to buy in denner (175g for 2.95.-!!) later on we met with a few friends from class and had some vin chaud (mulled wine, new favourite drink). There was a huge tent by the train station which seemed to be full of the entire population of Sierre and more, we left quite early because we were tired and hungry, and found out the next day that there had been a knife attack in that same tent! I think the victim survived… switzerland is sounding less sweet and innocent by the month

I now have a swiss bank account! Going to have to take out swiss franc using my british card as usual, and then pay the money into my new account, so to avoid the ridiculous £22 fee that incurs when sending money internationally through online banking (thanks natwest). Received my parcel from home which consisted of thermal underclothes and chocolate rice cakes, which didn’t last long.

Spent a lot of time in the studio this week throwing out some new ideas and trying to paint without using it all up. Kind of takes the fun and freedom out of it if you’re feeling limited by your materials. We went to have a look in another classmate’s studio, who has an entire room to himself, filled with random items and trinkets that he finds. He said he buys nothing but hot glue, for everything he finds he believes already is art itself and does not need major editing apart from maybe the combining of it with other items. very ‘one man’s trash is another man’s treasure’. With my work (finally decided) i am trying to explore the concept of the language barrier and communications being lost in translation, through a whole range of mediums, planning to attempt at some photography and sound, which isn’t normally my forte

It’s getting really cold now. Missing the brief warmth we had when we arrived

references/info/helpful stuff

FOOD

we haven’t actually eaten out in sierre as it’s so expensive. like ‘sat down, wined and dined’ eaten out. we have been to the McDonalds, which is 7.20.- for a happy meal, and  anywhere between 11.- and 15.- for a normal medium meal depending what you get. a burger by itself can range between 5.- to 10.- too

Holy Cow is a good one. burger chips and a non-alcoholic drink for 14.90 (if you’re a student, when i bought i didn’t need to show my student card?? but its better to have on you just incase)

SHOPPING

Denner -  for poor people (us) . the Aldi/Lidl of Switzerland (there is also Aldi/Lidl in switzerland but this is much more common to come across) its where we get all of our groceries. bread, milk, all the necessities can generally be found for 1-2.-. some vegetables and fruit can be a little more. the cheapest eggs i find are 3.30- for a 15 pack i think. always have deals on, cheap cakes biscuits etc. alcohol too, i always buy a certain wine from there for 4.95.-. cheap shitty sandwiches are 2.95-

Migros - going up in the scale. think Morrisons/Asda/Tesco. only really go here if we can’t find it in Denner. they also have more wide variety of products like beauty products, electronics, depending on which store you go to. stationary too, and for example pins (for putting posters up) seem to be 1.90.- everywhere. sandwiches getting a little pricier here circling 5.-

Co-op - for rich people. more between british co-op and waitrose. we’ve been told this is where the freshest fruit and veg can be found, and in more variety. but at higher cost. i’m not a supermarket expert but i know a horrifyingly high price when i see one. rarely set foot in here, only if desperate. sandwiches can be up to 7.- or more. occasionally you could find a deal on that’s better than the other shops but that requires some good looking around.

Manor - i call it the swiss Debenhams (maybe a hint of M&S). make -up counters, variety of clothing ranges, their homeware selections is amazing (but pricey) and there is Manor food. they do a really tasty mozzarella, tomato and pesto bap thing for 4.30.-

SECOND HAND STORES

Sierre - Job Transit. this place is actually in Chippis which is just a 5-10 minute walk over the bridge from the Inn in Sierre. Mainly books, clothes, furniture, ornaments. never seen bikes/scooters

Sion - HIOB, Emmaüs

TRAINS / TRAVELLING

Half fare card. get this. you need it. 185.- but if you want to travel a lot, its worth the sacrifice

Free travel after 7pm card . i am just about to purchase. 129.- , buy it as soon as you arrive here, like i should’ve done. if you’re going for a lot of days out, just don’t go home til after 7. or make friends elsewhere/couch surf and go out after 7 then return after 7 the next day, all free. (i think this is only available if you hold a half fare card too)

Supersaver tickets this service is also handy, we didn’t discover it til quite far in. only downside is that you have to get the specific train that you’ve booked.

Fête de bienvenue

Just one more photo of Thun because I couldn’t resist. Theres more on my instagram.

A few weeks ago we received invitations to a welcome party/meeting/shindig at the town hall, and as two of our friends in the inn are fairly new too we added them as plus 1′s and brought them along. Boy, the food…. We were introduced to our english translator for the evening and then listened to the mayor’s speech, a local band group, all whilst eyeing up the plates piled with swiss delicacies. The vast majority of people there were families, some I imagine had come here with much more need than us. It was a really good night, on the way home paid a visit to the infamous Les Wagons, a music/social venue, which we sadly found had closed for the remainder of winter.

Fun in Thun

The views were spectacular at this place. snow covered mountains to the south of the lake, and a castle!! I arrived early to explore so wandered around and made friends with an elderly thai lady who tipped me off about a great viewing spot. Despite it being a city with a vast array of shops, it still had quite a quaint feel to it, as i found myself walking down narrow cobbled streets. The river which flowed through the town was full of ducks, and friendly swans??

In the late afternoon we met the rest of our class at the Kunstmuseum to view the exhibition ‘THE FORCES BEHIND THE FORMS’ which displayed work by numerous artists from all over the world. Some of the most eye-catching works consisted of Nina Canell’s installation ‘In Absence of Satin Ions’ and Julian Charrière’s ‘Tropisme’, as seen below.

Typical thing to say but the aesthetic of these pieces was wonderful. The plants were so perfectly preserved, in their own little winter universe. Another piece of Charrière’s which stood out to me was his photo series ‘The Blue Fossil Entropic Stories’ which i stupidly didn’t take a good photo of so here’s some help from google images. 

The artist is using a blow torch to melt the ice beneath his feet, in short symbolising the process of climate change, however viewing them in the gallery, my initial thoughts were the photos came across rather lonely and fearful, as they appeared a lot darker in contrast/brightness placed on the wall. The setting looks almost alien, dwarfing the lone traveller at the centre. made me think of the experience David Attenborough and countless other nature documentary narrators/crews must feel when surrounded by such a vast landscape and how in that moment you are completely at the mercy of nature

I have a meeting with my main tutor this week, and praying that he likes my sudden abundance of ideas and work and forgive me that i took so bloody long to decide on what i want to do. Pictures to follow, maybe. adieu