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

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

Nöel

I organised a secret santa for the inn, before the Masters students began to leave mid-December, and it worked! No one was left present-less. We had a party that same night all the presents were opened, welcoming anyone from the school and more, which has apparently put us in the hall of fame of successful parties in Sierre.

I paid my third visit to the MAXXX gallery to see a friend’s work - ‘Notes on Mountaintops’ by Hanne Van Dyck. There was so much magical narrative in her work, including collections of ghost stories which she’d been told about a room in her residency at the Villa Mercier in Sierre, and others. Beneath the main floor of the project space is a sort of basement, which i didn’t discover until after roughly 20 minutes was also being used for exhibiting! It was a projector displaying some fantastic imagery of the mountains, and several pairs of headphones each emitting a different style of musical sound, which when listened to gave varying feelings whilst watching the images of the mountains fade out and into each other. 

Marché de Noël Montreux 

If you want to visit the mother of all christmas markets, this is it. For me anyway, but Chelsea said it even dwarfed the Birmingham Christmas Markets which I imagine must be pretty big. We had our first taste of fondue! Albeit poured into a baguette, but this only cost 9.- whereas the traditional pot costs over 20.-. I hadn’t realised how strong the flavour of the wine is in it, but it was enjoyable.

We paid a visit to the Queen Studio Experience, which was tucked away in a casino. Despite seeing them live a couple of years ago I had never really known much about them so all the information and items displayed were very interesting. We also got a typical photo stood next to the Freddie Mercury Statue on the waterfront.

A couple of days before we broke up for christmas, there was a small meal held at the school for students involved in particular courses, and I went to check it out. Spaghetti galore! And an abundance of funky looking cakes..

More Crans Montana

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

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

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.

Film workshop

Despite only being here for just over a month, when I heard the workshop leader’s voice (he was english!!) I felt a bit nostalgic for home. I love the diversity of this place, all variety of accents, but when you suddenly hear someone speaking in an english accent in this little town it can be quite nice.

The aim of the week was to create our own short film in groups, and me and Chelsea were paired with two other girls, Julie and Heloise. We were instructed to choose a text in light of which we would structure our filming and acting around, and somehow we ended up with Samuel Beckett’s play ‘Waiting for Godot’. Some parts of the dialogue were quite humorous and involved only one or two words from each speaker so we thought it would be fun to try reading it out in both french and english.

We were given the recording equipment and sent off to try it. I chose an acting role in the film and surprisingly found it quite fun, although i hate to watch myself back afterwards. Once we had all of our footage we set about editing it on Adobe Premiere, which gave me some handy new tech knowledge

The workshop leader himself, Redmond Entwistle, gave us a presentation of some of his own films at one point during the week, excerpts of which can be found here .

Give me something to type about

I took a ride to town earlier to get some quick shopping, and there was something about this afternoon/evening that made it feel particularly magical… the way the sun sets leaving the town in shadow whilst the mountain tops gleam in the light, it has to be one of the, if not the best views i’ve ever seen.

We went to a project space called MAXXX in Sierre a couple of days ago, to hear a talk by two artists that had been working on a project and book based on sounds. We both ended up buying their book ‘Seismographic Sounds - Visions of a New World’.

I found this discarded mirror around the side of the Théâtre Les Halles, by the train tracks, and brought it back to Movimax. Will eventually be doing something with it

Half n half. We found the resident McDonalds and large shopping malls!

Soundfiles 2

We went to the city of Lausanne after the workshop, and Lora took us to some shops before they closed. i say “took us” i mean “she was running ahead urging us to hurry with us sweating and crawling along behind”. Huge art shop which we’re making a note of going back to. It’s so strange to see people drinking freely in the streets, everywhere. We watched the sunset from above the town with the Cathédrale de Notre-Dame behind us, an enormous gothic building which we circled twice trying to find an entrance but with no luck. We got the subway back to the main train station and then so came the two hour journey back to Sierre. it isn’t as fun when you can’t see anything out of the window. When we got back at about…. half 10? The others were having a party in the lounge but we were so tired we went to bed and conked out

On Saturday several of us from the Inn took the train to Sion, where i bought a bike and ate the second best burger I’ve ever had, at a place called Holy Cow. The first is one i had only a few weeks ago back in wales. this year is a real burger discovery year

In the evening we were given a musical performance in the living room by another inn-mate and his friend, who both play drums. It was kind of mesmerising to listen to… The drums were passed round throughout, and i found the rhythm quite easily but then keeping up with it was a different matter. needless to say i won’t be becoming a musician any time soon

Later that night we went to a nearby music venue/club/thing (there’s clubs in sierre??) where there were a variety of live acts playing all sorts of music, it was gr8. The place is called The Hacienda, apparently used to be an abattoir, and is hidden within the building below, which i’d taken a photo of a couple of days ago before knowing what it was

Bonjour

Dying for a walk but the weather is so grim. The way Lora complained about the rain made me hopeful that it’s usually a sunnier place than the one we’ve been greeted with. Everyone seems very ‘to themselves’ here, going about their own things. I’ve learnt that a few of them originate from countries which are currently rather unstable, politically, and so this quiet town hidden away in the mountains is a pretty relaxing place for them. They all seem very wise

The town itself is amazing, the architecture especially, each building is unique to any other and painted beautifully, and so from above i expect the town to look smothered with all sorts of colours. Talking about being “up there” I’ve heard of this ski resort called Crans Montana which is situated somewhere in the surrounding Alps, which I’m desperate to visit, but having to wait until classes start to see what (if any) free time I have. Also need maps. Lots of them. This is turning out to be the sort of place where often you can’t just google where the place is that you want to reach, you have to walk, get lost, keep walking, and so on. The fact that the mountains are visible everywhere you go is dreamlike, like an alien landscape.

Due to some unusual (i promise) forgetfulness I’ve left my art supplies at home, resulting in me hurriedly buying some cheap pencils and fineliners from whatever supermarket i could find. My mum has kindly decided to post me my pencil case though so hopefully my last minute purchases will last through whatever work i do until it gets here.

It’s so tempting to just do everything right away and go everywhere!

p.s We are glued to this language app which is supposed to help us learn french. Will it work? Probably not, but stay tuned. à bientôt!