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

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