Marc-Arthur Sohna
NGOG LITUBA, LA MONTAGNE
TOMBÉE DU CIEL
2025
This work takes the form of a performance and a multimedia installation where ancestral memory and futuristic imagination intersect. The performance was born out of anger in response to the colonial violence inflicted upon Ngog Lituba, the sacred mountain of the Bassa people in Cameroon. In 1960, a Christian cross was forcibly placed at its summit, desecrating this sacred site despite the community’s ongoing resistance to this day. This work first took shape through a long process of writing — a deep dive into archives and oral narratives — which gradually led to a rewriting of the myth surrounding Ngog Lituba.
This work marks, the beginning of a practice that explores the connections between diaspora, memory, and the necessity of reinventing oneself.
Aurore Mesot
A DESK OF ONE’S OWN
2025
For several years, my design practice has explored the notion of the threshold: the window as an opening, a frame, and a space of memory. In my master’s written work Windowsill, the window became a conceptual device — a key to interpretation — opening a reflection on intimacy, the outside world, and the circulation of voices.
A Desk of One’s Own is an interactive and evolving installation that reimagines the desk as a poetic and political space. Each fragment forms a living archive of feminist memories, inscribed within the very furniture of intellectual labor. Each desk becomes a surface of resistance and sharing; each drawer holds a hidden voice or narrative.
From the window to the desk, my trajectory has expanded: from the symbolic threshold to the physical space, from the framed view to the ways of inhabiting and transforming space.
Gabriella Luchetta
VOYAGER
2025
Voyager is an experimental multimedia installation that imagines the moon as a living archive of queer voices.
At its core are six interviews with queer and transgender people living in Geneva, who share reflections on self-acceptance, transformation, visibility, and collective care. Their words form the essential material of the installation, resonating both as personal testimonies and as political affirmations.
The narrative of the work follows the lunar cycle, with each phase shaping the sound and visual atmosphere. Voices resonate through speakers arranged in the space; the sound is spatialized so that each movement of the visitor reveals new combinations and sonic perspectives.
Adèle Guilbault
POSSEIDA PLATUNTILDA
2024
An imaginary foundation of species rescued from scientific laboratories. Visitors encounter a pseudo-scientific discovery, a human who has become a marine species. The fiction begins with a real scientific theory and then emancipates from it in an immersive dreamlike installation. This installation plays with scientific codes by blurring the boundaries between reality and fiction, and between irrefutable and false information. Adèle Guilbault works on these microscopic representations on an inordinate scale. At this moment that her aesthetic universe takes on its full meaning. Transcending two-dimensional scientific schemes through aesthetic choices of medium, material and colour.
The reseach about fiction take place at the archives of the Zoological Museum of Lausanne to consult their iconography. Adèle Guilbault already based a written work on cryptozoology. Cryptozoology is a pseudo-science concerned with fantastic creatures (Mermaids, Bigfoot, Lockness Monster).
Emile Demerliac
PIPES HAVE THEIR WAYS
2024
Pipes have their ways is an installation and sound machine which brings the public in a playful, civic ritual centered around the creation of soundscapes which relate to the architecture environment. By mixing ancient pipe organ making technics and the use of modern DIY methods, this work honors the history of techniques as much as our intelligence in freely recomposing from it.
The installation is an infrastructure for air and sound. Parts such as bellows, wood structures and sounding instruments made of PVC pipes are connected through hoses and pipes which allow the air to travel through
the interrelated elements. Between them are interactive objects which function like “gates” to let the air flow or not into the sound instruments. Working like drawers, those objects inspire a playful way of making sound with air as they can be easily manipulated by a simple push or pull gesture.
Lovena Vedrine
BLACK SPACES
2024
This project all started with Lovena’s relationship with her hair. Growing up as an adopted child in a white environment, her hair highlighted her difference. Unlike her skin, she could transform her hair to look like her friends. Going to the salon was about straightening or weaving, which were unpleasant processes. So, she began learning to style her own hair. This learning process was also about understanding the historical significance of Afro hair. Afro hair holds deep historical significance, tied to cultural identity, heritage, and resistance. For many years, Afro hair has been mistreated and stigmatized due to colonial and racist attitudes that viewed natural Black hair as inferior. This was a way to suppress Black identity and enforce Eurocentric beauty stan-dards.
A "Black space" refers to both physical and symbolic places where the identities and experiences of Black individuals are celebrated and central. These spaces include neighborhoods, institutions, gathering places, and even cultural spaces that affirm and value Black identities.
Vincent Grange
DOROTHY’S HOUSE
2023
In order to avoid persecution for homosexuality in the United States during the mid 20th cen- tury, gay men, and later the LGBTQIA+ com- munity as a whole, introduced themselves as “friends of Dorothy” in order to discreetly communicate their gender or sexual orientation. In the 1980s, the Naval Investigative Service heard about this phenomenon within the US army in Chicago, and led a prolonged and futile investigation to catch Dorothy, hoping she would share the names of all her gay friends in the military.
This immersive installation invites the public to embark on a journey through the different rooms and corridors of the House of Dorothy, this most wanted imaginary woman. In addition to condemning this homophobic investigation through a philosophy of absurdity, this project stands as an homage to the many queer spaces around the world and their stories, and intends to highlight the importance of their existence. At the intersection of Queer History and spatial design, the architecture, artifacts, and different machines contribute to the story- telling of the imaginary life of this extraordinary woman.
Sonya Isupova
MAPPING UNCERTAIN LANDSCAPE :
THE SATELITE
2023
Witnessing changes of the Ukrainian landscape: surveilling, tracking and targeting, diagramming, drawing, and redrawing the segments of Ukrainian terrain using a map-making machine. Since the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, global news agencies, intelligence agencies, independent cartographers, and investiga- tive journalists have pored over the map.
The installation explores the relationship between humans and machines, the map maker, and the map. Looking closer at the remote-sensing infrastructures, and their problematics. As well as questioning maps and mapping processes all in order to sense changes in the landscape that are occurring daily due to the current war in Ukraine. Sonya Isupova built a plotter machine, a metaphorical satellite, hovering above the land, mapping the data with a limited amount of accuracy, transforming satellite images into maps of the territory.
Kenny Polyzois
CROBERT AND SWAYNE
2022
This Diploma project is an experimental film that intersects the elements of 2D animation and real space, it plays with dimensional transitions and shows the struggles of production alongside the “typical“ story that plays out. Throughout this process, he brought his personal project into his practice, by placing two main characters from his comic within the movie set and getting them to interact not only with their own space but with our reality as well.
As a designer, Kenny wanted to punctuate the creative process through simple means. The structures of the buildings have a lot of flaws, this is due to the fact that everything is cut, painted and glued by hand. He wanted these flaws to not only emphasize how messy and chaotic the process of creation really is but to highlight the old aesthetic of the neighbourhood. The grunge texture corrodes the city, and its lack of everyday objects leaves it empty. The set also has its own outdoor movie theatre, where his film is projected, that way both 2D and 3D worlds can enjoy the movie.
Noemie Castella
THOSE NIGHTS THAT GROW LONGER
2021
A contemporary interpretation of the Swiss monster tradition where women are claiming their space in history, folklore and public spaces. In the Lötschental Valley, in the Canton of Valais, there is a tradition whereby every year men dress up in furry costumes with grimacing masks to frighten those who would have the misfortune to cross their path. This is the tradition of the Tschäggättä. Before the 1960s, single men wore this costume to go in search of a young woman. They would enter in their houses, grab a victim and cover her face with soot. These simulations of violent behaviors have been transmitted for generations under the guise of tradition. Today even though they are allowed to participate to this celebration, women usually don’t. Noemi Castella tried to understand why, and she imagined that it’s because the traditional costume is designed for a male body and they might not want to wear a costume that represents an assailant for them. Using different techniques, Noemi created new monsters and wrote a new mythology for a tradition that tells the story of these women who took the power back after being victims for years. Creating a new female monster means shaking up the tradition, reversing the gender roles. The parade of these monsters is a testimony of emancipation.
Tanguy Benoit
TRADE WINDS AND WESTERLIES
2021
Trade Winds and Westerlies examines certain methodologies of landscape representation that build Western conceptions of otherness and the otherworldly in popular media.
This project brings into play cinematic archetypes developed through the Western genre since 1939 in Hollywood, such as: the indispensable use of landscape in the narrative, the importance of the skyline in the composition of images, the particular colorimetric rendering resulting from the Technicolor process.
Amandine Lecuyer
SPACE IS THE MOVIE
2020
A fast and furious road movie combining DIY, digital tools, live performance and precise choreography.
Space is the movie is a film and theater performance by Amandine Lécuyer exploring live cinema and ‘beyond the 4th wall’ filming. In her live performance, she brings together the making of cinema, theater in a captivating, creative and humoristic way. On stage, around her production table and equipped with her 3 cameras, Amandine performs a choreography that is as precise as it is curious. With ingenuity and simplicity, she makes a road movie in front of your eyes through 15 different sets imagined in a language of do-it-yourself. She demonstrates an impressive resourcefulness in finding ways to create the scenes with daily life and recycle materials. Behind her, an assistant edits the scenes and projects the film while it is being performed.
Philomène le Baron
THE LIVING ROOM
2020
The domestic space of the living room is here rethought and redefined through the materiality of kitsch. Each object proposes a story and a game of scale and textures.
The living room is a fascinating domestic space, between a performance and an exhibition space. It is often in the living room that we receive guests. This place of sharing is central to our living since the time of the Victorian’s bourgeoisie, which also points to the beginning of the world of kitsch. Here kitsch is used as a new material and its characteristics are staged. The codes of dinners and social moments of receptions are replayed through the composition of this space and its accumulation of references.
Jessica-Maria Nassif
MIX, MATCH AND START FROM SCRATCH
2020
Jessica-Maria Nassif’s performance raises consciousness on audio surveillance. Oblivious in global awereness, audio surveillance is just as much a threat as visual and data surveillance. It might actually be an even bigger threat, because it is invisible. We’re surrounded by microphones in our daily lives: all our conversations, our voices, even the way we speak can be collected, analysed and retained.
In her performance, Nassif brings you the year 2020, where she speculates that this phenomenon has already happened: Our phones and all our smart devices have created a new intelligence listening landscape, and every word has consequences.
Rita Hajj
PERITOPIA
2018
If the counterculture of the 1960s contributed to the transition from modernism to post-modernism, can we then think that a new "post-Internet" era is born out of the appropriation of social networks as a diverted tool of the new media? Peritopia attempts to explore the elusive body language of the Internet, specifically that of Periscope, and seeks to define it today, starting from its beginning, in the 1990s, with the online live-streaming.
Peritopia is an installation exhibiting a live performance re-enactment of gestures taken from the Periscope app and live-streamed back on the online platform.
Maïa Vaillant
GLIMPSE OF LIE, AN ARCHITECTURAL TEASER
2018
Is an architectural construct, an impossible (or improbable) proposition collaged from different representation techniques subverting its physical and material logic. It is by translating them into a physical experience that we increase the probability of their future existence.
Salome Guillemin
ARCHEOLOGY OF THE INVISIBLE
2017
Archeology of the invisible is a project through which Salome developed a synthetic archeologic site exploring modern interpretations of ancient artefacts, in particular the "Cupules" phenomenon. Those new artefacts take the shape of instruments that produce sound with the magnetism of our bodies when we come in close contact with them, thus exposing the invisible potential of human beings: from their conductive and magnetic composition to their myths and the narratives that they imagine.
Scientific advisor: Elena Burri-Wyser, archaeologist.
Fabio Stefanoni & Lucas Bertinotti
THE DATA-HOLE PARADOX
2017
The Data Hole Paradox is a 6m diametre dome space designed as an immersive audio-visual experience in which space, objects and digitally animated films generate an eerie and absorbing experience of shifting horizons.
Ecology, ideology and duty. The three pillars sustaining the Data-Hole Paradox project are strictly related to one another by a common perspective: a far point lies lays between earth and sky / common reality and fiction; but there is no single point. Many points form a line, a horizon, that defines an unclear future, an extreme common direction, a confusing description of our present reality.
Lisa H Moura
ALIEN NATION: PARADE 0
2017
Alien Nation is the representation of a model for politics. It is the first public manifestation of an ongoing project that deals with the social and political implications of the duality of the term "alien" (its legal use to describe foreigners or immigrants and its use in science fiction to denominate extraterrestrial creatures). Alien Nation has no territory other than the one defined by the gathering of its people, raising questions related to the individual and collective sense of belonging to a place or a culture. The form of a parade is used as a way to fuel happenings that gather Alien Nation's population and provide the space to discuss who we are and how we want to be seen. As alienated humans, we have been told we do not belong. But as sci-fi characters we have been told we came from Outer Space. So, as Aliens, we politely excuse ourselves from Earth and begin our journey to return to the home science fiction gave us, by establishing the Moon as our first step to the final frontier.
Emma Pflieger
POSTMODERN PALEONTOLOGY
2016
Postmodern Paleontology picks at the bones of the dinosaurs to demonstrate the politicised nature of how we know the past. The unknowableness of pre-history makes it available for symbolic manipulation in the construction of ideological and political meaning by corporations. Mixing up real and imaginary histories, three dioramas depict three plausible satirical scenarios: Sue, the best preserved T-Rex specimen ever found is owned by McDonalds and Disney. In our alternate timeline Alberta’s Dinosaur Park presents the newly discovered Macdosaur and Disnosaur. At the Chicago World's Fair of 1933–1934 the Sinclair Oil Corporation sponsored a exhibit based on a now discredited correlation between petrol deposits and dinosaurs. We imagine excavated dinosaurs being reburied for gas stations to provide a luxury fuel for Flintstones cars. The Conservative Christian Discovery Institute lobbies to teach creationism alongside evolution. In 1997 US politician Sarah Palin claimed that dinosaurs and humans walked the earth at the same time. We imagine new universities set up attracting tourists, students and hunters to search for monsters in Mokélé-mbembélake in Congo and Loch Ness in Scotland and 0ind fossils to raise money at auction to further conservative Christian public policy.
Ghida Bahsoun & Ingrid Rousseau
GUFFETSCH
2016
Guffetsch uses Alfred Hitchcock’s concept of the McGuffin as a device to explore the creative process. The McGuffin is an object or device that enables the plot to unfold but which is not in itself of any dramatic value. As well as containing a McGuffin, an action film ostensibly being made is itself a McGuffin, important only as a device to enable the making of the documentary Guffetsch EP01. The name Guffetsch is a reference to both the McGuffin and the Aletsch Glacier, in Valais, Switzerland, where the idea saw the light of day. Guffetsch gives equal importance to the participants and the narration as well as the audience and the context. The company selects exceptional locations and applies a cinematographic layer of details to immerse the public in the event's universe.
Monika Steiger
WÖRTERZETTLER
2015
MERA — yes and no. The Wörterzettler collects and archives Swiss German terms and words that are disappearing
ZA:NTUME — everywhere.
This special vehicle, a tractor, creates a link to the rural regions and acts as a trigger to get in touch with the people. It has embarked on a journey through six villages, which are situated a distance of 25km apart in the region of Bern.
STONGGLE — to stir.
During two-day stops in each village terms were collected through dialogue with the inhabitants, recalling words that are close to falling into oblivion.
HERGOLANI — for God’s sake.
The words were used typographically to create posters, currently being exhibited in KKLB – Kunst und Kultur im Landessender Beromünster, Lucerne.
Wendy Gaze
HEROIC SIMULATOR
2014
Now, you are the hero! Heroic Simulator is a series of nine interactive devices allowing recreating the experience of space as lived by cinema heroes, including iconic scenes of ‘flying’ from Titanic, bullet time from The Matrix and the rose petals in American Beauty. Each simulator is accompanied by a manual and acting script for staging and the role that the user must play. Heroic Simulator #1 I’m Flying allows the user to imagine experiencing the famous scene from James Cameron's Titanic, ascending a high structure that leans you forward with outstretched arms. The fun and humour of projecting yourself into an iconic scene that is and crucially isn’t reproduced by the mechanical device and everyday setting symbolically enacts gestures of everyday heroism emerging in real life.
