Gabriela LöffeL - gabriela loeffel siteweb

Transcription

Gabriela Löffel
documentation
(selection)
[email protected]
http://vimeo.com/gabrielaloeffel
http://loeffelgabriela.com
Videostill “Offscreen“
Table of contents
p 03
the case Video installation 2015
p 06
fassung #1 Video installation 2015
p 08
offscreen
Video installation 2013 (DE 2014)
p 12
embedded language Video installation 2013
p 14
untitled Series of photos 2012
p 16
setting Video installation 2011
p 19
the easy way out Video installation 2010
p 21
un temps
Video installation 2010
p 23
fallbeispiel
p 25
angle vide
p 27
fokus Video installation 2002-2003
p 29
cv
p 31
press release
the case
Installation / 2-channel video / Headphones / HD / Stereo / 34’ / 2015
The 2014 “ELSA Moot Court Competition on WTO Law” (court competition in international trade law),
which took place at the World Trade Organization in Geneva, builds the base for “The Case“.
The World Trade Organization (WTO) is the only international organization holding authority over the rules
of international trade. In 1995, it replaced the GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade), which had
been created in 1947.
WTO’s primary goal is to foster liberalism via the promotion of free trade, the settlement of commercial
disputes and the oversight of national policies.
The Elsa Moot Court Competition on WTO Law for jurists is a simulated hearing of a legal case, which
different parties expose and debate on. It constitutes a moment where language morphs into rhetorics and
thus also into a specific instrument of discourse and politics. These processes, by which lawyers and judges
rhetorically negotiate laws, also constitute political moments that unveil the power of language.
During the semi-final and the final round, I filmed two different teams. One was from the renowned Harvard
Law School in Cambridge, which acted as the complainant during the final round. The other team came from
the National and Kapodistrian University in Athens. It embodied the complainant at the semi-final, and the
respondent at the final round of the hearing on the same legal case.
The legal case at the 2014 ELSA Moot Court Competition is built on a complaint filed with the WTO Court
by the fictive African State “United Kingdom of Commercia” against another fictive African State called the
“Federal Republic of Aquitania”.
The case may be described as follows :
In 2005, Nova Tertia, one of the Federal Republic of Aquitania’s provinces, sells its water supply and water
treatment to a private company, Avanti SA, signing a contract for 20 years.
In 2007, the company rises its service costs by 70%. At the same time, it refuses to carry out the extension and
renovation works the government has been calling for several times. This leads to a protest movement against
the contract signed with Avanti SA among the population.
In 2009, the province of Nova Tertia suspends the contract concluded with Avanti SA by anticipation.
The Headquarters of Avanti SA being in Commercia, the company requests the Ministry of Trade of the United
Kingdom of Commercia to file a complaint against the Federal Republic of Aquitania with the WTO Court.
This fictitious legal case, its description and the utterly realistic issues it brings up, raises questions regarding the
production of rhetorics, of language and of their application within economic and political structures.
I confront these substantial questions with a visual language which produces fictive hypotheses to, once again,
blur the boundaries between documentary and fictional content.
The installation comprises 2 synchronized screens hanging next to each other. The sound is transmitted via
headphones.
Videostill “The Case” 2015
Filmed at the WTO, Geneva.
With support from the Office of Culture Canton Bern.
Exhibition “The Case” Dazibao Montréal, CA 2015
Photo : Marilou Crispin
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fassung #1
Installation / Single channel video / Headphones / HD / Stereo / 24’20
Photograph 17x13cm diasec / 2015
In collaboration with
Benedikt Greiner - Actor
At the 100th anniversary celebrations of the Swiss Air Force “Air 14”, I staged an interview with one of the
employees of Pilatus Aircraft. Upon a common agreement, he exposed some of his personal positions to me.
Pilatus Aircraft is a company that may be qualified as a symbol of Swiss politics with regard to war material
exports and applications - politics that have been regularly criticized, both nationally and internationally, since
the 1970’s.
Shortly after the interview, which was recorded on video, and which quite unsurprisingly didn’t yield any new
information whatsoever on the company’s export strategy, I received a text message from my interview partner
at Pilatus:
“Hello Mrs Loeffel. I kindly ask you to keep any recording you made of me during the interview confidential
and I trust in your discretion. Best regards.”
That text message is the point of departure for the realization of “Fassung #1”.
After having consulted with several business journalists in Switzerland, it could be supposed that such mandate
to remain silent, such censorship, may not merely be a coincidence. Rather, it could be considered as a partially
internalised method in the world of business, especially targeting critical journalists (often based on and
elaborated in conjunction with the Swiss Federal Unfair Competition Law/ UWG, UCA).
I then transposed this filmed interview in a theater, on an empty stage, in the absence of an audience, a stage
also being a space of rhetorics. There is an actor on the stage, he sits in front of a screen and watches the original
interview. He attempts to imitate the interviewee as faithfully as possible. His task is to translate the Pilatus
employee’s words from Swiss German into high German and to reproduce his gestures and body language - he
has to be that person. This process of direct duplication induces various emotions in the actor, stress as well as
disruptive moments where we can see and hear the failure of language and translation.
This imitation technique, one of the most basic methods in drama, allows for the observation of language use
through copying and simulating. Thanks to the translation and transfer of the recorded interview into another
linguistic space, we are able to build up some distance to the actual content, which in turn possibly allows for a
questioning of the circumstances which language and power relations evolve in.
The video is being presented on a screen equipped with headphones. A photograph of the text message hangs
beside the screen.
Videostill “Fassung #1” 2015
Filmed at the Stadttheater in Bern, Vidmarhalle.
With the support of Pro Helvetia und Konzert Theater Bern.
“Fassung #1” Cantonale Berne Jura, Kunsthalle Bern 2015
Photo : David Aebi
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Videostill “Fassung #1” 2015
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offscreen
Installation/ 3-channel video projection / 2 framed screens / Wireless headphones
Speakers / HD / 28’/ 2012-2013
Alister Mazzotti - Stunt choreographer
Tolga Degirmen, Sascha Girndt, Ralph Güthler, Anja Sauermann, Vanessa Wieduwilt - Stunt artists
Benedikt Greiner - German-language narrator
Paulo Dos Santos - French-language narrator
Julien Tsongas - English-language narrator
“Offscreen” is based on the account of a young man who went on a package holiday to Afghanistan and Iran in
2011. Holidaying in crisis zones, such as Afghanistan, Iraq, North Korea and Somalia is the latest holiday offer
from the tourist industry. Promotional slogans such as “Be there and Gain a real understanding of conflicts”
are used, while “Help rebuild” and “Get your hands dirty” appeal to tourists wishing to participate in on-site
aid efforts. Getting personally involved in “useful work”, for example clearing landmine fields, is just one of the
tours awaiting travellers. This new form of tourism is an extreme and worrying example of how we deal with the
realities of war, and of how tourism now deals with it as a consumer good.
An actor reinterpret the narrative text that I have edited, in order to create a shift here as well. This voice-over
takes centre-stage in “Offscreen”, it takes the visitors through the exhibition via headphones.
The text has been complemented and expanded upon with filmed images. In this visual language, I establish
yet another layer which creates space for reflection. To do this, I use the motion picture and its production
infrastructure, the film studio in Babelsberg Potsdam. These production sites, which have previously been
used to make blockbuster films about historical and fictive wars, evoking a variety of memories, feelings and
experiences, were where I filmed for this project. With my camera, I observed the different scenes including the
plane set and the “Berliner Strasse” film set, which have become visual references for war films thanks to motion
pictures such as “The Pianist”.
I also filmed stunt artists rehearsing scenes in the special effects studio during their preparation, in a simulate
setting, for the actual shooting (so-called video previews). They used the holiday narrative as the context for the
scenes. Stunt artists represent danger and action – they brave danger and thus lend their bodies to the original
person, the actor. In this way, stunt performers are body doubles, and as bodies that are exclusively in danger
and in action, they symbolise the perfection that can face up to almost (any) danger. I relate these aspects to
the war tourists.
In the installation, the studio recordings are projected onto two framed screens, which in turn are in the form
of a stage scenery in the exhibition room. The recordings of the stunt performers are projected directly onto the
wall. This creates a landscape of imitations and reconstructions within which the visitor may move.
Videostill “Offscreen” 2012-2013, Film studio Babelsberg, DE
Situation of the Installation
Video projection onto the wall
There are three versions of the installation, in English, in German and in French.
With the assistance of Studio Babelsberg AG, Potsdam Germany
With support from the City of Bern Cultural Department, Canton of Bern Cultural Office, 2012 grant from the
Société des Arts in Geneva, the City of Geneva Contemporary Art Fund (FMAC), the Canton of Geneva Contemporary
Art Fund (FCAC) and the Masé Studio in Geneva
Video projection onto 2screens,
standing on the floor
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NARRATIVE EXTRACT
“I saw the ad for this trip in the newspaper about a year ago. “Adventure holiday”. My attention was drawn
to it mainly because trips to Iraq were also on offer. At the time, I had just finished my degree, and I saw this
as my reward I suppose. I was there for a whole month – first in Iran and then in Afghanistan. I would have
loved to have gone to Iraq as well, but it wasn’t good timing – it would have clashed with my exams. Then
once I was in Iran, once I was down there, then I wanted to stay a bit!
When you arrive in Kabul, the first thing that you see at the airport is soldiers, and lots of jeeps with soldiers
on the back. But you get used to that really quickly – it’s the same with the police and the army – after 2
days you’re used to it.
It was great one night. We were near Bagram, which is the biggest US air base that they have out there, and
planes are constantly flying overhead. We slept outside, and the flight path was right above us. That night,
loads of planes were flying about and we thought something must be up. The next day we got a text from
Switzerland: “Bin Laden has been killed”. It was only afterwards that we realised that Bagram had been the
base for the whole operation, and that probably one of the planes that we heard and saw was carrying the
people who stormed Bin Laden’s house and were then flown back. So we were there when he was killed, right
next to the air base, and that was really pretty... pretty impressive when you’re part of world history – almost!
The way it was for us was that the bodyguard was always just a few steps behind us, and he said to us: we
want you to be able to walk around, you can look for yourselves and go where you want, and we’ll always
be just a few steps behind and we’ll keep an eye on you. It wasn’t that he was always two metres... sorry, two
centimetres behind me, guarding over me – you had a lot of freedom, including in the bazaar, well, hmm,
yeah, in the bazaar actually you might maybe need him to stand right behind you. But like in Bamiyan, if
you somehow end up somewhere where, eh, where no-one’s about, then yeah, eh, yeah he sometimes leaves
his rifle in the car or yeah... sometimes he also took off his combat gear and just wore civilian clothes for
example...
So you don’t notice, and you just get used to it really quickly. And yeah... OK I did military service and
we always had my Dad’s rifle at home anyway, so in that sense it wasn’t really anything out of the ordinary
for me. And it’s not like, em, that you had the feeling of being, like, overprotected or anything. Sure, the
bodyguard was very watchful, but not in a bad way – you just knew that there were three other people there
who were looking out for you, and then you could really enjoy it, look round at your leisure, you could look
at different things, and then if there was any danger, they would just tell you straight away. Actually you
didn’t even have to worry yourself, you didn’t have to keep an eye on things – those guys were really great.”
Exhibition “Geschichte in Geschichten” Helmhaus Zürich, 2015
Photo : FBM Studio
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9’500 euros, c’est beaucoup et c’est peu d’argent. 9 500 euros pour des vacances, c’est toutefois un joli budget. Au choix,
vous pourriez aujourd’hui acheter une caravane tout confort et envisager de nombreux voyages avec, ou louer un domaine
d’exception en Bourgogne pouvant contenir jusqu’à 65 personnes pour 7 nuits. Tant qu’à faire, partir loin à ce prix, seul ou
en famille, est possible en louant, par exemple, une villa de luxe sur les hauteurs de Toiny à Saint-Barthélemy avec une vue
époustouflante sur l’océan, une piscine chauffée et un jaccuzzi à disposition, une semaine, vol compris. 9 500 euros, c’est
également le prix d’un séjour de deux semaines proposé par une agence ad hoc pour s’offrir des « vacances en zones de crises
», comme on l’apprend dans Offscreen de Gabriela Löffel. Un « voyage d’aventure », comme il a été entrepris par un jeune
Suisse souhaitant s’offrir « une récompense » à la fin de ses études. « Un voyage qui vaille le coup. » D’abord en Iran, puis en
Afghanistan.
Après s’être intéressée de très près ces dernières années à un camp d’entraînement militaire américain installé en Bavière
(Setting, 2011), Gabriela Löffel qui, en 2010, réalisait déjà The Easy Way Out en s’appuyant sur une discussion surprise au
bar d’un hôtel non loin de ce même camp américain, nous livre aujourd’hui Offscreen (2013). Dans la prolongation des autres
travaux, Offscreen dénonce une situation liée aux guerres du Moyen Orient et politiquement tolérée par notre société bien
pensante. L’artiste découvre ses sujets sur Internet, puis procède à un travail d’enquête. Elle réunit dans un premier temps une
solide documentation qu’elle déconstruit par la suite avant d’en recréer un scénario qui ne peut qu’éveiller l’esprit critique du
spectateur tout en évitant les terrains glissants du voyeurisme, du jugement facile ou de la synthèse trop rapide.
L’installation Offscreen présente trois écrans qui plongent le visiteur dans trois scénarios visuels projetés parallèlement tout
en étant accompagnés par un même récit en voix off : le récit d’un voyage « en zones de crises ». Passé le premier mouvement
de caméra balayant un rideau de scène, le théâtre peut commencer. Sur des fonds d’images de qualité, qui ne sont en rien
illustratives, la voix d’un homme raconte alors non sans fierté cette expérience qui l’a fait « participer à l’histoire ». Comme
dans The Easy Way Out, ou dans Setting, dans Offscreen Gabriela Löffel ne pointe pas sa caméra précisément sur le sujet dont
il est question. Elle trouve des moyens imagés de mettre en perspective les propos recueillis en insistant sur le décalage qui
existe entre le réel et le vécu, la projection et l’expérience, la réalité et la mise en scène. Orchestrés par l’artiste, les constructions
de boîtes en carton, les travellings à l’intérieur et à l’extérieur d’un avion de ligne, les répétitions de cascadeurs professionnels
soulignent l’artifice, le décor, la rupture d’avec le vrai monde.
Exhibition “Offscreen” Halle Nord, Genève 2013.
Photo : Erika Irmler
Le protagoniste d’Offscreen a donc trouvé sa destination, originale et atypique : une chose qu’il se doit d’expérimenter avant
d’avoir « un emploi fixe ou une famille… ». Et profiter également d’une destination « sans touristes ». Enfin, « ne pas perdre
son temps », comme tant d’autres le font « en lézardant sur une plage ». Son histoire – adaptée à partir d’une vraie interview,
puis retravaillée avant d’être lue par un comédien professionnel – capte l’attention du visiteur qui, affublé d’un casque audio
pour l’écouter, ne peut que difficilement couper court à la densité du contenu. Plus de 600 photographies ont été prises par le
jeune étudiant lors de ce voyage. Aucune de ces 600 images ne vient pourtant prendre place dans les vidéos de Gabriela Löffel.
Bien au contraire, sa caméra filme par exemple les rues désertes d’une ville européenne ou des immeubles ternes qui, dans la
mémoire collective de tout Occidental, lorsqu’elles sont accompagnées par un récit de guerre, font penser inévitablement à
la Seconde Guerre mondiale…plus loin, les plans révèlent finalement l’arrière d’immeubles …et surtout les échaffaudages de
décors. Ceux des studios cinématographiques de Babelsberg à Potsdam, là où a notamment été tourné Le Pianiste de Roman
Polanski.
Les mises en relation avec l’histoire, l’actualité, les médias, mais également avec le cinéma, la narration s’imposent d’ellesmêmes. Le travail de Gabriela Löffel n’est là ni pour documenter ni pour relater ni pour condamner, il permet au visiteur de
comprendre par lui-même, grâce à la construction du récit proposé, un état de fait pour le moins alarmant... quelle frontière
existe-t-il encore entre le quotidien et les lieux en guerre ? Adressé à une génération habituée au zapping, le dispositif présente
donc trois sources visuelles et deux sources sonores (l’histoire narrée dans le casque et un son de bruissement sourd emplissant
la salle d’exposition) qu’il s’agit de combiner entre elles afin de saisir le propos d’Offscreen. Le spectateur regarde, écoute et
est invité à se déplacer physiquement dans l’espace de l’exposition entre des écrans monumentaux. Des conditions propices au
déclenchement d’une réflexion qui s’impose devant cette nouvelle production, percutante, de l’artiste bernoise.
Karine Tissot
Director Centre d’art contemporain, Yverdon-les-Bains
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embedded language
Installation / Video projection / Flat screen / Headphones / HD / 19’ / 2013
Jean-Luc Montminy - Dubbing artist
Joey Galimi - Studio director
Caroll Cafardy - Sound engineer
At the “20th International Defence Industry Exhibition MSPO” 2012 in Poland, I interviewed, in English, an
executive from a Polish arms manufacturing firm. I then transposed this filmed interview in a Dubbing-studio
in Montreal, Canada.
Dubbing artist and actor Jean-Luc Montminy (who is the French-Canadian voice for actors including Bruce
Willis and Denzel Washington) dubbed the interview into French in collaboration with a studio director and a
sound engineer, as would be done for a motion picture production.
I captured this moment of language and discourse deconstruction and reconstruction with my camera. The
moment at which an arms manufacturer is given another language and other words by a dubbing artist and
the technical infrastructure at a cinema becomes visible here. This process can lead to questions about language
and power and their (in)visibility, and also brings in the issue of armed politics in relation to film/the world of
cinema. Film and war have had a complex dialectic relationship since the beginning of motion picture history,
and are closely connected in terms of the production, the technology and image reception. Looking at these
relationships is part of this discussion.
This shift of a documentary to the production site of fiction – the film studio, should allow questioning around
the complex issues of political and economic interests on the difficult grounds of arms dealing.
In the exhibition, the video with the dubbing artist is projected onto the wall. The video with the interview is
set at the same height and size on a flat screen that is integrated into the wall. The sound comes through the
headphones.
Videostill “Embedded Language” 2013, Dubbing artist J-L. Montminy
Filmed in Cinélume film studio in Montreal.
In co-production with “Vidéographe” Montreal and “La Bande Vidéo” Quebec.
With support from the Canton of Bern Cultural Office.
Videostill “Embedded Language” 2013, Interview MSPO Poland
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Videostill “Embedded Language” 2013, Dubbing artist J-L. Montminy
Video with the dubbing artist
as a projection
Video with the interview
on a flat screen integrated into the wall
Headphones
13
untitled
Series of photos / 23x34.5cm / Diasec / 2013
This series of photographs is part of a research project that took me to the 2012 “International Defence Industry
Exhibition” in Poland. I spent four days on site researching, taking photographs and filming. There are around
400 companies from 29 countries at this trade fair, presenting their “goods” and “services”. Politics and business
go hand and hand into the spotlight. For a week, contracts, agreements and deals are negotiated – and no-one
worries about possibly being observed by a critical eye. All of this takes place at a standard trade fair: there is a
festive atmosphere, with culinary and musical entertainment provided round the clock. Predominantly female
trade fair hostesses also help create a “inviting” environment for businesspeople and politicians.
Reality-distorting constructions seemed to hit me right between the eyes over the course of these few days. The
fair is a way of utterly trivialising armed politics and military force. The reality of war is completely masked and
replaced with a show of technology and entertainment, and, in my opinion, this perfectly illustrates the very
pertinent and complex issues surrounding how realities are made (in)visible. To consider this question further,
I refer to extracts of texts, including this one by Judith Butler:
“Efforts to control the visual and narrative dimensions of war delimit public discourse by establishing and disposing
the sensuous parameters of reality itself – including what can be seen and what can be heard. As a result, it makes sense
to ask, does regulating the limits of what is visible or audible serve as a precondition of war waging, one facilitated by
cameras and other technologies of communication?“
Judith Butler
In: “Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable?“ Brooklyn, NY: Verso, 2009
Photo : Gabriela Löffel
International Defence Industry Exhibition Poland, 2012
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Photo : Gabriela Löffel
International Defence Industry Exhibition Poland, 2012
15
setting
Installation / 2-channel video projection / Speakers / HDV / 33’ / 2011
Daniel Hug - Sound Designer
Miruna Coca-Cozma - French-language narrator
Nadja Schulz-Berlinghoff - German -language narrator
Video projection
Grafenwöhr is the biggest US army training camp outside the United States. The camp, comprising a total
area of 276km2, was set up under the Kingdom of Bavaria and has been US property since 1945. It lies within
a nature reserve, public access is prohibited. Soldiers stationed at Grafenwöhr usually undergo a three weeks
training before being sent off to Iraq or Afghanistan. At the same time, students, unemployed persons and other
German nationals are employed as extras at the training area. For three weeks, they are supposed to act the part
of Arab civilians to assist the soldiers in their training.
The accounts of two former extras build the backbone of “Setting”. The recordings that I made with the extras
are reinterpreted by an actress. This voice-over creates another shift in which realities, staging and facts, which
have been transferred to different arenas, reappear. Attention is therefore focused on the actual starting point
of this “staged war in Bavaria”.
These shifts are also present at the audio-visual level. I worked with sound designer Daniel Hug on the narratives
of the extras. We created a soundtrack containing references to films and war films, and the different sounds
associated with these. The sound manufacturing process is filmed with static video cameras in the radio play
studio, in order to allow sound, in its visual form, to take centre stage. This provokes questions about staging
and realities.
These video recordings are assembled as a rhythmic image composition and installed in the room as a dual
projection, alongside the audio track. However, for a large part of the narrative, no pictures are visible. The
sound fills the whole room and the video images appear unexpectedly at various dramaturgical points in the
narrative.
There are two versions of the installation, in German and in French.
Video projection
Speaker
ambient sound
Speaker
Stereo right
Speaker
Stereo left
Speaker
voice-over
With support from the City of Bern Cultural Department, Canton of Bern Cultural Office and the Migros Cultural
Percentage. TPC - Technology and Production Center Switzerland AG, Basel and the Département Cinéma / Cinéma
du réel at Head, the Geneva University of Art and Design.
Speaker
ambient sound
Speaker
ambient sound
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EXTRACT FROM THE ACCOUNT OF AN EXTRA
“The training villages... didn’t actually represent villages, but were actually sometimes really cities – I mean Tikrit is
a city, and so is Basra. But because there’s not enough space at the training area, and because of the effort and cost
involved, they just call them villages and you are supposed to imagine that it’s actually a huge city. So... that means
that everything’s actually really pretty... off-the-wall actually, if you think about it! So you have a couple of huts, there
are these villages with stone houses, and then there are the mini mounts. They have, I don’t know, five or six log huts, I
mean mini huts, and then these are supposed to represent a city sometimes, depending on the run-through. So yeah, you
really have to use your imagination, and so do the soldiers. They have to imagine that they’re somehow in a city district
in... Iraq... or... yeah.
There was quite a big village, where a lot of people could be at once... they also have several houses. The houses, well,
originally they were built with pointed roofs, and then they began gradually flattening these out to make flat roofs,
because in the Middle East they have flat roofs. Originally the whole place was built for Kosovo. And that’s why they had
pointed roofs. But for this kind of rooftop urban warfare that’s fairly common in Iraq or Afghanistan, they put on flat
roofs... and then they made kind of balustrades around them. Each village also always had a street, and then the houses
were either close to or further away from the street, and every village had its own features. It’s in a huge nature reserve,
and it’s also fairly hilly, so some places looked very different. One of the villages was in a dip, the next halfway up a slope
and so on. Yeah, and the houses were also designated as something in particular, for example there was the town house,
then the school and the residential housing, then the mechanics and a café, and the mosque as well...”
We once did a...a bomb attack... that was pretty creepy. There was a very big emergency services response, and we
were all at a demonstration, that is almost all of the villagers went to a demonstration for, em, better conditions. We
demonstrated in front of the military barracks... in front of the medical staff actually, and we protested about the fact
that there was still such a lot of uncertainty despite the foreign military presence. And that the civilian population was
actually permanently in danger, from both sides actually, and then in the... middle... of the demonstration, a bomb
exploded, a suicide bomb. We had all been prepared in advance, I mean all of our wounds and injuries had already
been prepared and then we had to em... based on that... and we also had a card. I had a really gruesome wound. I had
shrapnel in my head and... then... I, yeah, and my husband was uninjured... and then I, well lots of people were lying
around – lots of them were dead, many were injured, and there was lots of groaning and blood everywhere – they sprayed
red paint everywhere.
And then I started running around, I mean I kind of really played the part. And the American soldiers actually were
supposed to have been providing security for this protest, but it was useless, and so they were just standing around. Yeah.
And then they were actually completely nervous, because what quite often happens is that two bombs go off one after the
other, so that em, there are as many victims as possible. And that’s why they were actually so nervous. And I was running
around deliriously, completely covered in blood. My husband tried to support me and help me, and he was asking the
soldiers for help. And priorities were marked on these cards, so head injuries obviously had top priority, unlike... I don’t
know, a scratch on the arm or something. And it took a really long time for the medical team to react, and then I kept
going up to these soldiers who were, I guess just reeling really, and then I tried to... hold onto them, because my legs
were so weak and then one of them... he just pointed his rifle right into my face... like that! And that was really, I mean
then I really... I really got a shock as a real person... because... well.”
Exhibition “Setting” Les Halles, Porrentruy 2012
Photo : Philippe Queloz
Exhibition “Crosnier Extra Muros” Bac, Genève 2011
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Videostill “Setting” 2011
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the easy way out
Installation / 3-channel video rear projection / Headphones / Speakers / Slideshow
Citation by Karl Kraus / 20’ / 2010
Sophie Hengl, Benoît Kremer, Nathalie Loiseau - Simultaneous interpreters for the French-language version
Carmen Delgado, Markus Mettler, Valeria Tschannen - Simultaneous interpreters for the Germanlanguage version
In “The easy way out“ interpreters, who normally work in the shadow of the diplomats and politicians for
whom they interpret, are put in the spotlight, in front of the video camera, and observed. The starting point of
this project was an audio recording that I made on the border of the US military training area in Grafenwöhr,
Bavaria. It centres on a discussion between a US soldier who has just come back from Iraq, a German hotel
owner in Grafenwöhr who provides accommodation for soldiers and the bilingual car saleswoman who lives
next door. The three interpreters experiment with simultaneously interpreting this conversation which moves
from everyday life in Bavaria and in conflict zones right through to political opinions and stances.
I filmed this moment of seeking words and comprehension, of attempting to transfer information and of
simultaneous understanding in a situation that is stressful for the interpreters. The recording is on three separate,
synchronously recorded pieces of footage.
In the exhibition room, the interpretations can be heard through the headphones, and at the same time the
video images of the respective interpreters appear projected on three screens. The original audio conversation,
recorded in Bavaria, is broadcast into the room over speakers. The information in the conversation is fragmented
and thus leaves space for verification and attentive listening to the words and meanings, and their origins.
The observer is also struck by the repeated speechlessness of the interpreters faced with the conversation
to be interpreted, as well as their efforts to extract themselves from this void. Photographs of this “border
area” between the US military training area and the Bavarian country landscape are presented on flat screens.
Territorial symbols and cultural traces can be identified.
Speaker
Speaker
3 video
rear projection
Slideshow
Headphones
Slideshow
was zu sagen hat, trete vor und schweige! »
Karl Kraus, 1914
„Wer etwas zu sagen hat, trete vor und schweige!“
[veːr] [ˈɛtvas] [tsuː] [ˈzaːgən] [hat], [ˈtreːtə] [foːr] [ʊnt] [ˈʃvaɪgə]
Karl Kraus, aus „In dieser grossen Zeit“ Die Fackel Nr. 404, Dezember 1914
There are two versions of this installation, with German interpreters and with French interpreters.
With support from the City of Bern Cultural Department, Canton of Bern Cultural Office and the Migros Cultural
Percentage.
With assistance from the École de traduction et d’interprétation ETI, Geneva.
Exhibition “The easy way out” Galerie Ex-Machina Genève 2010
19
Videostill “The easy way out” 2010
Slideshow “The easy way out” 2010
20
[un temps]
Installation / Video projection / Headphones / HDV / 10’ / 2010
Sylvie Rey – Sign-language interpreter
Michel Grobety - Actor
Installations-Situation
Video projection
In [un temps] the actor Michel Grobety, who played Clov in Michel Soutter’s 1978 production of “Endgame” by
Samuel Beckett, remembers the staged scenes and his movements. He reads aloud the parts of main characters,
Clov and Hamm, from the book. At the same time, interpreter Sylvie Rey works simultaneously into signlanguage. This interpretation can, however, only be seen when Clov’s part is being read. Hamm’s part can
only be heard and the stool, site of the interpretation, remains empty. The microphone is directed towards the
empty stool, making this lack of words and language audible and visible. On the stage, I confront the sustained
and extreme disappearance of the dimension of time, of nothingness, punctuated with fragments of words
attempting to fill it, with the background sounds of sign language. The absence of a theatre audience represents
the continuation of these voids.
What I take from Beckett’s “Endgame” is primarily the maintenance of emptiness and silence as they bear
witness to the absurd events taking place, as well as the pointless communication, the impossible dialogue.
The video is installed as a projection in the exhibition room, which is equipped with fewer stools. The sound is
audible on the headphones.
A version of the video with German subtitles is available.
With support from L‘association Michel Soutter, Erika Irmler and the theatre of Carouge.
Headphones
21
Videostill [un temps] 2010
22
fallbeispiel
Installation / Multi-channel video projection / Surround sound / 2006
Julie Beauvais, Fabio Bergamaschi, Antonio Buil, Catherine Büchi, Romaine Chapuis, Delphine Lanza,
Ismael Oiartzabal, Paola Pagani, Pauline Wassermann - Actors and dancers
In “Fallbeispiel”, which looks at the “falling body”, professional dancers and actors perform examples of falls.
The falls are repeated relentlessly until their physical effects can be seen, thus allowing the viewer to discern the
passage of time. Only the seconds just before and after the fall – the preparation, the effect and the reaction
of the falling person – are made visible. The traces and signs of the moments just before or after the fall entail
the uneasy question of how much longer each steady position can be held, thereby potentially depriving the
observer from their own protected position.The fall itself is replaced in the picture by a rhythmic “fading-out”
and reappearance of the body. Depending on the available space, life-size pictures of this filmed dancers and
actors are installed as a dual or triple channel projection.
The actual action, the fall not shown in the picture, is resumed on the sound track, which captures the adapted
and abstracted sounds of the bodies and their internal throbbing, vibrating, thudding and scuffing. This stands
in opposition to the image and its silence. These noises are recorded using contact and stethoscope microphones,
and represent an audio composition within the installation, in the form of surround sound.
3 Video projection
4 Speakers
With support from City of Bern Cultural Department, Canton of Bern Cultural Office and the Migros Cultural
Percentage.
Exhibition “Fallbeispiel” Galerie Stargazer, Genève 2010
23
AESCHLIMANN CORTI AWARD 2007
Jury: Madeleine Schuppli, Director of Kunstmuseum Thun
Christoph Lichtin, Curator Kunstmuseum Lucerne
Dr. Holger Hoffmann, Bernische Kunstgesellschaft
Susanne Kulli, Bernische Kunstgesellschaft, President of visarte.bern
Mario Sala, Artist, Winterthur
In her video installation “Fallbeispiel”, Gabriela Löffel (1972) depicts how individuals, shown on
two projections facing each other, get progressively marked by exhaustion. As observers, we stand
in between these young and old men and women and we participate in the strenuous scene they’re
being subjected to. We never get to see the actual reason for their strain: a constant movement of
falling down and getting up again. The falling moment is blinded out. What we see are the instants
just before the fall and just after the rise. But we do hear the sounds of bodies landing with a
smack on the ground, we hear the bodies’ respiration getting heavier, the sound track and the image
follow different logics. The artist suppresses the essential moment of the sequence, while creating an
overpowering sound effect. In so doing, she makes up room for imagination. Indeed, we fill up the
space with our own pictures as determined by the sound. It seems impossible to extract oneself from
Gabriela Löffel’s video installation: the images she produces are striking, and the ones she doesn’t
show, the ones that are within us, deploy their dramatic effect up to the edges of brutality.
This work stands out by its reduced and highly metaphorical nature. Of course we know that these
people, who stand up in front of us, drenched in sweat, are all actors. However, the skilful artistic
realisation, the purposeful selection of different types of persons, the rhythmic sound, the subtleness
of the fade-ins and fade-outs, all these features open up so much space, allowing us to connect
what we see to actual facts and to a more general image of society. We recognise for instance that in
society, just as in the video, people wear themselves out up until the moment they get replaced by
other people.
Videostill “Fallbeispiel” 2006
Although Gabriela Löffel’s work may take up a critical stance, it also pertains to a specific tradition
of image, which takes as a starting point performance art out of Body Art from the late sixties and
extends until today. The artist doesn’t draw back from the archaic images created by her predecessors
and their body performances. Quite on the contrary, she takes them up and translates them into a
new visual language via the subtle manipulation of video art and sound art.
The jury has decided to award to Gabriela Löffel the main prize of this year’s Aeschlimann Corti
grant for the excellence in form and content of her work. It is a very telling example (a so-called
“Fallbeispiel”) of just how powerful the art of omission can be.
Jury report by CHRISTOPH LICHTIN
(Translate by Sophie Hengl)
24
angle vide
Installation / Video rear projection / Surround sound / 2005
Giuditta, Joëlle, Saskia, Sebastien, Sony - Boxers
An important part of boxing training is the “shadow”, known as the “vide” in French. Shadow-boxing is fighting
alone against an invisible adversary. This imaginary, invisible opponent, and the fight against him, are the focus
of “Angle vide” for which I worked with professional boxers.
To what extent, and based on which imaginings and interests, can we create opponents and enemies? How do
we appropriate them? The invisible enemy and opponent, the pervasive danger, could be anyone.
The camera records the progressive, physical transformation and exhaustion, the loss of emotional control and
the concentration of the boxers.
These images are projected onto the screen in the middle of the exhibition room as video rear projections.
The imaginary opponent is also part of the content of the audio recordings. I asked the boxers how they entered
into this “state” of imagining an opponent. How do they transform the situation into an authentic fight with
an invisible opponent? How do they experience this situation of targeted aggression towards an “empty” target?
These audio recordings are installed and played as surround sound, meaning that the voices move throughout
the room.
4 Speaker
video rear projection
With support from City of Bern Cultural Department and Canton of Bern Cultural Office.
A version of the video with German subtitles is available.
25
Videostill “Angle vide” 2005
26
fokus
Installation / Video projection / Headphone / 5’41’’ / 2002-03
In collaboration wtih
Ariane Blatter, Cora Liechti, Letitia Ramos, Doris Schmid.
Four women, who have never before had any contact with weapons, shoot a pistol for the first time at an
indoor gun range. The women confront their own limits and experiences of the perception and representation
of violence. This brief moment of confrontation has been recorded using a special 16mm high-speed camera
(150 frames/second).
“Fokus” is projected on loop. The original sound track (the breathing of the women and the shot) can be heard
through headphone. As the observer watches the film, they are in the same “isolated” situation as the women in
the film, who are also wearing headphones.
“Fokus” is also set against the backdrop of the question of how violence and gender roles are depicted in the
media. It is an attempt to questioning these representations of violence and roles constructions.
Videostill “Fokus” 2003
With support from City of Bern Cultural Department and Canton of Bern Cultural Office.
Video projection
Headphone
27
Videostill “Fokus” 2003
28
*1972 Oberburg/ CH 2005 / 2006
2000 - 2005
2002 / 2003
Formation pour l’enseignement artistique HTA, ESBA Genève. Liliane Schneiter
ESBA, Ecole supérieure des beaux-arts Genève. Ateliers Laurent Schmid, Carmen Perrin
Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien / Meisterklasse Peter Kogler
Exhibitions and Screenings (selection)
2016
“Komplexe Systeme” E-Werk-Galerie für Gegenwartskunst Freiburg D
“TWISTING C(R)ASH” Athen, GR
Swiss Art Awards, Basel
2015
“Geschichte in Geschichten” Helmhaus Zürich
“TWISTING C(R)ASH” Le Commun Genève
“Embedded Language” Dazibao Montréal CA
“Nachbilder FFV” Kino Kunstmuseum Bern
“Fassung #1” Liste Art Fair Basel, Special Guest at Druckwerk
“Kinematographische Räume” Kaskadenkondensator Basel
“Cantonale Berne Jura” Kunsthalle Bern
2014
“Bieler Fototage 2014”
“Cantonale Berne Jura” Kunsthaus Langenthal
2013
“The easy way out” La Bande Vidéo, Québec CA
Auswahl „Fotopreis 2013 des Kantons Bern” Kornhausforum Bern
“Move Movie” Centre d’Art Contemporain, Yverdon-les-Bains
“Offscreen” Halle Nord, Genève
2012
“Setting” Espace d’Art Contemporain (les halles) Porrentruy
2011
“Cantonale Berne Jura” Kunstmuseum Thun
“Hors Bords” Halle Nord, Genève
“Staging Voices” Progr / Stadtgalerie Bern
“Crosnier Extra Muros” Société des arts Genève, BAC Genève
“Rodeo.12” Genève
“Ex-Hibition” Galerie Ex-machina, Genève
Mediathek “Café de rêves” Helmhaus Zürich
“Art film screening” Red House Gallery, New York USA
2010
Jahresausstellung Kunsthalle Bern
“The easy way out” Standard/deluxe, Lausanne
“Fokus” Schweizer Videokunst, Landshuter Kunstnacht, Neue Galerie D
“Fallbeispiel” on Arte “die Nacht/la Nuit” by P. Ouazan
“50JPG” Galerie Stargazer, Genève
“The easy way out” Galerie Ex-Machina, Genève
2009 “Angle vide” on Arte “die Nacht/la Nuit” by P. Ouazan
Duplex, Genève
“MAC” Fmac Genève
“Weihnachtsausstellung” Agent Double, Genève
2008
“Fenstersprung” PROGR Bern
“Gleiche Höhe” Kunstprojekt Schweiz/Österreich, Wien A
“Tribühne” Passagegalerie Künstlerhaus Wien A
“In Progress” PROGR Bern
“700IS Selection 2007” ATA, San Francisco USA
2007
“Weihnachtsausstellung” Standard/deluxe, Lausanne
“700IS Selection 2007” Filmcentre Rodina, St.Petersburg RUS
“700IS Selection 2007” Alsager Gallery, Manchester GB
“Aeschlimann-Corti Stipendienausstellung” Kunstmuseum Thun
“CWW” O3ONE, Belgrad RS
2006
Centre Georges Pompidou “Live-Streaming Arte die Nacht/la Nuit” Paris F
“Angle vide” on Arte “die Nacht/la Nuit” by P. Ouazan
2005
“Angle vide” Progr Ausstellungszone, Bern
“Fokus” on Arte “die Nacht/la Nuit” by P. Ouazan
“Success, Friends and career” Attitudes, Genève
“Aeschlimann-Corti Stipendienausstellung” Kunstmuseum Bern
“En mai, fais ce qu’il te plait” Palais de l’Athénée, Genève
“Les lois de l’hospitalité” Esba, Genève
2004
“Fokus” Kunstsalon Berlin D
“Aeschlimann-Corti Stipendienausstellung” Centre PasqueArt Biel
RatLab bei Attitudes, Genève
“Gonna Take You On” Zentralbüro, Berlin D
“Kinolinie6” Basel
“Mitte voll ins Schwarze” Videoprogramm VID, Grosshöchstetten
2003
“Addition” Kunstbuero/Kunsthalle 8 Wien A
“Fokus” Semperdepot, Wien A
“Electric rendez-vous” Plug.Ins Basel
29
Festivals
2007
“700IS” Experimental Film and Videofestival, Egilsstadir IS
2003
“Biennale de l’image en mouvement” Genève
“VID” Dampfzentrale, Bern
“Second International Videofestival” Pristina KOS
“Videoex” Zürich
grants and Awards
2015
Award Irène Reymond Fondation
Grant Bildende Kunst, Amt für Kultur Kanton Bern
2013
Award “Anerkennungspreis / Fotopreise 2013” Amt für Kultur Kanton Bern
Contribution Amt für Kultur Kanton Bern
2012
Grant 2012 Société des Arts, Genève
Contribution Fonds d’art contemporain de la Ville de Genève (FMAC)
Contribution Fonds cantonal d’art contemporain, Genève (FCAC)
Contribution Abteilung Kulturelles Stadt Bern
2011
Swiss Art Award
Award “Fondation Gertrude Hirzel” Société des arts Genève
Contribution Migros-Kulturprozent
2009
2007
Award “Aeschlimann-Corti Stipendium”
2006
2005
2003
collections
Schweizerische Nationalbibliothek
Collection des Beaux-Arts Jura
Kantonale Kunstsammlung Bern, Amt für Kultur Kanton Bern
FMAC / Fonds d‘art contemporain de la Ville de Genève
Residencies
2013
“La Bande Vidéo” Québec CA
“Vidéographe” Montréal CA
2006
“Artdirekt” Berlin D
“Gil-society” Akureyri IS
“Skaftfell” Seydisfjördur IS
publications
“Collection Cahiers d’Artistes 2015” Pro Helvetia
Pro Helvetia Journal / Liste Art Fair Basel 2015, Daniel Morgenthaler
“Gabriela Löffel - Millefeuille” Le Courrier Dezember 2013, Samuel Schellenberg
“Gabriela Löffel - Bühnen für den Krieg” Kunstbulletin November 2013, Brita Polzer
“Setting” Citysharing.ch, 2013 , Merel van Tilburg
“Cahier de la classe des beaux-arts” Genève 2011, Karine Tissot
“La fiction comme expérience des réalités” Kunstbulletin Mai 2011, Françoise Ninghetto
“Le soldat n’est jamais le méchant” Le Courrier November 2010, Tilo Steireif
und Revue Daté November/Dezember 2010
30
“Collection Cahiers d’Artistes 2015”
Pro Helvetia, Edizioni Periferia
Andrea Cinel
Reflections on the work of Gabriela Löffel
Andrea
Cinel
«Avec le cinéma
on parle de tout,
on arrive à tout».
For more than ten years, Gabriela Löffel has been putting together
a body of work through which she confronts her viewers with issues
including the representation of violence, the trivialisation of war
and the manipulation of debates for economic and political ends.
Löffel is interested in situations where reality rubs shoulders with
fiction and she manipulates cinema’s codes and techniques to
expose our society’s contradictions. Always critical, yet not limited
to one single political reading, her work teases out the layers of
narrative and cites multiple references so as to create space for
reflection. In this sense, the installations Offscreen (2013) → S. 2—23
and Setting (2011) → S. 24—39 are perfect examples of the complexity
and commitment of her approach.
Reflections
on the work of Gabriela Löffel
Setting enfolds us in a spatiotemporal environment: its split
screen alternates the absence of images — darkness — with
sequences featuring sounds created using a wide range of techniques and objects by professional sound engineer Daniel Hug.
An array of loudspeakers emits these sounds or soundscapes
that he has put together; there is a loudspeaker at the centre of
the installation, but more important is the voice recounting an
extra’s experience.
We are not on a film set here; instead, we are in Bavaria,
immersed in the largest American military camp outside the United
States, where soldiers train prior to leaving for Iraq or Afghanistan.
Opened in 1910, the Grafenwöhr site was used by the German army
until the end of the Second World War. After 1945, it became an
American territory, whose location was of strategic importance
during the Cold War. Today, this camp is particularly known as
a place where conflict situations are staged by civilians on the
battlefield — that is, extras hired to play Arab civilians — to train
soldiers for combat.
After interviewing this extra, the artist called on a narrator
to interpret her testimony. The narrator relates her experience in
the camp: depending on the scenario, the extra might play the role
of an Afghan or Iraqi woman, perhaps in an everyday situation, or
perhaps during a simulated insurrection. However, the moment the
helicopters and tanks join the action, the fear becomes tangible,
almost real, even though this is a fictional war. These helicopters
47
48
Quelques réflexions
autour du travail de Gabriela Löffel
en page 41
“Through
cinema we can
discuss everything, achieve
everything.”
trigger something in our minds which goes beyond factual reality
and is more concerned with filmic memories. Remember for a
moment the opening sequences of Coppola’s Apocalypse Now,
where the noise of the helicopter engines and — metaphorically
speaking — the fan plunges us into the frenzied Vietnam War. Similarly, by drawing on the audio vocabulary of war films, the sound
engineer weaves a second story which is integrated into what we
see and what we hear between the audiovisual experience and
our memories of film.
In contrast, Offscreen makes use of three projections and two
audio tracks: the loudspeakers play an abstract soundtrack in
dialogue with the images while a wireless headset enables the
viewer to concentrate on the narrator’s voice and stroll through
the installation. Two screens show a series of projected cinema
sets — interior ones using a green screen or a replica aeroplane,
for example, and outdoor sets such as the reconstruction of Berlinerstrasse used by Polanski in The Pianist. Between the two
screens, a wall projection follows a team of stuntmen rehearsing
sequences taken from the narrator’s story.
Löffel listened to a young Swiss man who, in 2011, took part
in an all-inclusive package tour to Afghanistan and Iran: his trip
demonstrates a new sector in the tourism industry, namely holidays
in conflict zones. Again, the narrator’s interpretation fictionalises
the account and shows the power of storytelling. Accompanied by
a guide and a bodyguard, this traveller discovers a curious reality:
a notable feature of his trip through countries at war was a visit to
a landmine museum. He stays in the highest-security hotels, yet
also explores the most incredible landscapes that these countries
have to offer. All the same, there is a moment in the narration
where reality regains the upper hand over pretence and the story
becomes history: our tourist finds himself at Bagram just as the
operation to assassinate Bin Laden is launched.
From the design to the production to the creation of these installations, Löffel uses duplication and fragmentation. She fragments
and multiplies viewpoints by interweaving narrative and personal
accounts, created and evoked sounds, and direct recordings
49
31
juxtaposed with images of film sets, so as to muddy the waters
and encourage viewers to ask questions.
In this way, Löffel enquires into a documentary and fictional
approach while starting from direct testimony to create an edited
and scripted work that sets the narrator’s interpretation alongside
images and sounds. The artist uses the constant two-way flow between the subjective experience and a universal understanding of
war to show us how difficult it has become to distinguish between
the categories of reality, truth and fiction as we muse on current
wars and the ways in which they are represented. In contrast to
the — televised—Vietnam War and the — imageless — Gulf War, the
artist chose not to show the 21st century wars, but to recount them
indirectly, using the experiences of the tourist and the extra, via
the narrators’ disembodied voices — voices off. This refusal is an indepth investigation into the value of mass-media images, and also
a device that Löffel uses to criticise the ideological and economic
aspects inherent in their production.
Her oblique and political representation of war is reminiscent of the installations Raw Footage (2006) by Aernout Mik and
Serious Games (2009—2010) by Harun Farocki. The first of these
revisits images of the war in the former Yugoslavia not broadcast
by the media: Mik shows how extremely serious situations are intertwined with the unstressed beats of everyday life and criticises
the spectacularisation of war. In Serious Games, Farocki took an
interest in the new technologies used to train soldiers for combat:
like video games, they use digital models to shape reality. Löffel’s
approach shuns the spectacular and analyses the devices used to
prepare for war. She reveals the way in which our perception of
war is born of fiction: somewhere between those who believe in
objective photographs and those who see all images as a fabrication, she chose to film abstract sequences which forge links with
the world of cinema.
In this respect, the civilians on the battlefield on the
Grafenwöhr site are literally entertainment workers who evolve
in response to a scenario, which is itself akin to an American
blockbuster. These fictional people are the perfect symbol of
the idea of People Exposed, People as Extras, because they
are a metonymic representation of Arab populations, victims of
50
Andrea Cinel
interventions by foreign armies. In effect, as Didi-Huberman puts
it, people today are simultaneously over-exposed — as a result of
mesmerising spectacularisation and media attention — and underexposed thanks to the censorship practiced by the same media.
In our opinion, Setting is a precise reminder that “under-exposure
deprives us, quite simply, of ways of seeing that which should be
at issue”. 1 In Offscreen, on the other hand, the trip reveals the Disneyfication of the contemporary world, the commodification and
theatricalisation of every sector of the economy. Like Alice, bored
by her sister reading a book with no pictures or conversations, the
young Swiss man craves adventure and no longer distinguishes
between the real world and the absurd: ultimately, his trip is a
kind of cinematic experience in which the Iranians and Afghans
he meets are the extras.
All the same, Löffel’s relationship with the cinema is
further-reaching than this. The two installations reprise such Hollywood elements as the studio and sets. They also draw on the work
of film technicians and create something genuinely collective with
them. In this respect, the sets at Babelsberg Studio take us on a
journey into times and places that major American productions
have made familiar to us. Berlinerstrasse reveals quite literally
that cinema is all about façades. At the same time, the interior sets
compel us to reflect on the resources and techniques used in film
production: the green screen is the quintessential non-place in
which all worlds are possible and can exist. By contrast, the replica
aeroplane examines the clichés and the homogeneity of scenarios
in film. Moreover, the sound engineer in Setting plays on the fictional pact that we live out at the cinema when we perceive the
sounds accompanying the images on screen as real. In the same
way, the stuntmen in Offscreen rehearse scenes taken from the
young man’s story against a minimalist set made up of cardboard
boxes which could represent all sorts of objects.
Offscreen also uses cinematographic techniques:
long tracking shots alternate with short sequences, overviews
with details and fixed shots with reverse-angle shots: the editing defines the rhythm of the whole,
Georges Didi-Huberman, Peuples
which — as Coppola put it — is the true 1exposés,
peuples figurants. L’Oeil de l’histoire
essence of cinema. We must go beyond 4, 2012, p. 15.
51
visual editing in Löffel’s work, however, because the role played
by audio arrangements is probably even more important here. In
fact, despite appearances, the sound and original music in these
installations are never incidental or used as padding; instead, they
are compositions in constant dialogue with the narrators’ voices
and the on-screen images, or even sources that multiply the layers
of narrative and critique.
52
32
EVOLUTION WITHOUT HEAVY METAL
GABRIELA LÖFFEL
BY DANIEL MORGENTHALER
War is in: Syria, Switzerland, the Ukraine, inside us, in Yemen.
In Switzerland? Yes. And inside us? Above all. In an article
on Polish artist Krzysztof Wodiczko, art historian Rosalyn
Deutsche writes about the psychoanalyst Franco Fornari:
“…the most important part of Fornari s theory is his idea that
the individual subject gets rid of its violence, which is prohibited
by law, by investing or alienating it in the state, the social
institution that monopolizes violence. Fornari returns war to
the subject precisely in order to… motivate [individuals] to take
responsibility for war.” (1) The Italian was of the opinion that
war originates in the subconscious of every individual human
being: “…in tracing the war phenomenon to the unconscious of
each man we arrive at considering each man responsible for
war.” (2) For Krzysztof Wodiczko this assumption is manifest,
for example, in the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. Rosalyn Deutsche
writes, “Wodiczko approaches the Arc de Triomphe not only as
a symbol but also as a symptom of our culture of war.” (3)
In the course of her work Gabriela Löffel has also acquired
a sensitivity to the symptoms of war. And she, too, discovers
them in our immediate environs, in other words, in a Switzerland
in a state of peace. The symptom that led to her video and
audio work, Offscreen, was a Swiss travel agency that was
advertising tours to war zones. Through the travel agency, the
artist found a person who had acquired an image of the war in
Afghanistan. Offscreen takes its cue from her conversation
with him. When Osama Bin Laden was shot and the protagonist
of Löffel’s work was able to associate that with an increase
in air traffic, he felt as if he had been “part of world history”.
Does world history only consist of war? When are we not part of
world history? And when do we not carry war inside ourselves?
Alongside the travel agency that takes tourists to war zones,
Löffel discovered another symptom: a major event that
transported the war to French-speaking Switzerland. While the
rest of Europe was commemorating the start of the First World
War, Switzerland commemorated the 100 year anniversary of
its Air Force. AIR14, the most frequently googled Swiss event
in 2014, took place in Payerne in August and September. When
Löffel went there, she found: wooden structures to make it
easier to access the tanks, leading, as it were, straight into the
war; a large-format reproduction of the iconic picture taken
in 1972 during the Vietnam War by Nick Ut of the naked girl
running for her life from a napalm attack, hanging above a
fighter plane; and a “makeup tent” where visitors could have
the contours of their faces undone. Were ultimately all those
wearing camouflage makeup the most honest in carrying
the war within us on their skin? “We are ourselves inner war
memorials,” says Krzysztof Wodiczko. (4) The AIR14 visitors,
with camouflage makeup on their faces, have themselves
become memorials to the war.
Gabriela Löffel is currently generating a work of art out of all
the material she has accumulated – photographs and recorded
conversations with, for instance, an employee of Pilatus Aircraft
Ltd., a company that has come under fire because of the
weapons capacity of its products. However, on the basis of
Offscreen and earlier works, one can well imagine how Löffel
deals with these dialogues and pictures, namely, in another,
omnipresent arena of war: language. This last sentence is, in
fact, a rewarding point of departure: our language is riddled
with war metaphors – just take the artistic avant-garde, not to
mention “coming under fire”. Can these war metaphors perhaps
11
Pro Helvetia Journal, 2015
“Collection Cahiers d’Artistes”
(1) Rosalyn Deutsche, “Un-War: An Aesthetic Sketch”,
in: October Magazine 147, Winter 2014, Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press p. 13.
(2) Deutsche, p. 13.
(3) Deutsche, p. 6.
(6) http://www.air14.ch/internet/air14/de/home/
Programme.html (last accessed 12.5.2015).
be translated out of language?
Löffel’s work frequently relies on strategies of translating.
For instance, for Embedded Language, she had the unabashed
remarks made by a Polish businessman at a weapons trade fair
translated into French by the voice actor Jean-Luc Montminy.
And in The Easy Way Out, she had a conversation among three
people at an American military camp in Grafenwöhr, Bavaria
translated by interpreters, who usually work in the background
at United Nations conferences. There is hardly anything that
exposes the way someone uses language, including the
conscious as well as unconscious use of metaphor, more
mercilessly than translation into another language. And is
translating possibly even a prelude to exorcising? To exorcising
war metaphors out of language and at some point even
exorcising the phenomenon of war out of our unconscious –
by way of Claude Lévi-Strauss and Jacques Lacan with their
notion of the unconscious as structured like a language? If so,
Löffel’s practice of fostering legibility through linguistic transfer
is at least a tiny step on the path to an unconscious liberated
from war, to a society of “un-war”, as Krzysztof Wodiczko calls it.
Rosalyn Deutsche concludes her essay with the realism of
a Freudian who sees violence as an ineluctable constituent
of the human psyche: “...in reality, there is no such thing as
eradicating psychic violence.” (5) But the symptoms of war
can be localized. In our unconscious, in the Arc de Triomphe,
in Afghanistan, at AIR14. “Heavy Metal and Evolution” (6) was
the title of the program on the fourth day of AIR14. Evolution
without heavy metal would be better.
12
33
Gabriela
ART Par ses installations passionnantes aux strates
multiples, la Bernoise déconstruit le langage pour parler
politique, médias et conflits. A voir à Genève et à Yverdon.
LÖFFEL
Millefeuille
SAMUEL SCHELLENBERG
e Suisse Peter, appelons-le
comme ça, avait 9500 euros à
dépenser pour deux semaines
de vacances. Plutôt qu’une
croisière suite-balcon dans les Caraïbes ou un séjour thalasso-plongée
aux Maldives, il a choisi l’Afghanistan.
Avec garde du corps, Talibans à l’horizon, riz-kébab trois fois par jour et
testament à rédiger avant le départ.
Un choix incongru, pour ne pas dire
autre chose, qui est à la base d’Offscreen (2013), impressionnante installation vidéo de Gabriela Löffel à découvrir à l’espace d’art Halle Nord, à
Genève. «Je me demandais qui était
intéressé par ce genre de voyages organisés...» La réponse tient en 28 minutes, sur trois écrans et d’innombrables couches pour déconstruire
les propos d’un homme qui n’avait
pas grand-chose d’un Rambo.
La multiplication des strates, c’est
la spécialité de la Bernoise. Elle en rajoute à chaque travail, complexifiant
un peu plus une démarche qui ne
tient ni de la documentation, ni de la
fiction, mais d’une mosaïque de réinterprétations, traductions ou recadrages du langage. Le tout dans l’optique d’inviter les spectateurs à créer
des liens, «un peu comme si je donnais du jaune et du rouge pour qu’on
pense orange. Ou plutôt, pour qu’on
interroge ces images qui forment nos
avis sur la guerre ou la politique», explique la jeune quadragénaire dans
l’ambiance chaleureuse du BâteauLavoir, à deux pas d’une Halle Nord
un peu trop fraîche pour qu’on s’y
éternise. Mèches grises, léger accent
Suisse alémanique et tutoiement
d’office, elle précise tout de même
«éviter d’être didactique».
L
CARTON-PÂTE
Notre rendez-vous pour voir Offscreen, un peu plus tôt dans la matinée, avait été repoussé d’une heure
pour cause de problèmes techniques:
l’installation est complexe à lancer.
Casque audio sur les oreilles, les spectateurs suivent le voyage de Peter en
Afghanistan. Ce n’est pas le protagoniste qui parle mais un acteur, invité à
faire vivre un texte inspiré des cinq
heures d’interviews réalisées par Gabriela Löffel. On y apprend que le jeune homme a voulu s’offrir une «récompense» à la fin de ses études – une
parenthèse spéciale avant une vie
qu’il prévoit normale (travail, mariage, enfants). Et s’il est excité d’avoir assisté par hasard au ballet des hélicoptères partis pour tuer Ben Laden,
au Pakistan, il regrette l’annulation
d’un cours de déminage prévu au programme: il se réjouissait d’«aider».
Sur les écrans, les images formellement très belles sont celles des studios de Babelsberg à Potsdam, où ont
été tournés Metropolis, L’Ange bleu
ou, plus récemment, Stalingrad et Le
Pianiste. La caméra remonte une rue
de carton-pâte évoquant la Seconde
Guerre mondiale, et suit en parallèle
une troupe de cascadeurs. Rien à voir
avec les paysages traversés par Peter:
la référence au cinéma permet de poser de nombreuses questions et de
détourner l’attention pour mieux la
recadrer sur l’essentiel. Qu’est-ce que
le réel? Qui des médias ou de ces fabriques d’images façonnent véritablement notre vision des guerres et de
la géopolitique mondiale?
MIEUX QUE LE JOURNALISME
Au clair sur ce qu’elle veut, profondément réfractaire au compromis
– «c’est exclu, je n’en ferai jamais! A
part peut-être avec les équipes de
tournage ou les techniciens» –, Gabriela Löffel s’est lancée dans des
études artistiques après avoir pratiqué la peinture en autodidacte et séjourné à Berlin. Elle était motivée par
la possibilité de «questionner différemment» ou d’«avoir en main un outil puissant» – l’art. Plus tard dans la
conversation, elle ajoutera que c’est
aussi parce qu’elle est «très curieuse»
et que dans ce cas, «l’art est encore
mieux que le journalisme. Je peux
vraiment faire ce que je veux.»
Etudier à Berne ne l’intéressait
pas. «J’ai eu envie d’aller dans un
autre univers, dont je ne parlais pas la
langue»: elle choisit la ville au jet
d’eau, au détriment de Zurich, avec
des études à l’Ecole supérieure des
beaux-arts, entre 2000 et 2006. Elle
Gabriela Löffel au centre de son
installation Offscreen, à Halle Nord. JPDS
intègre immédiatement le milieu de
la culture autogérée et des squats.
«J’avais vraiment l’impression que
Genève était un laboratoire, pas une
entreprise.» Durant ses études, qu’elle passe en partie à Vienne, elle pratique d’abord la peinture, «comme
tous ceux de [sa] génération», s’amuse-t-elle. Elle passe à l’image en mouvement lorsqu’elle veut aborder des
sujets politiques: «J’ai eu besoin de ça
pour éviter les pièges.» Elle lit beaucoup, de Judith Butler à Susan Sontag
en passant par Karl Kraus, autour de
thématiques centrées sur le genre, la
guerre ou les médias.
Ses premières œuvres impliquent
moins de couches qu’Offscreen, mais
tout de même. Dans Fokus (2003), par
exemple, elle filme quatre femmes tirant au pistolet, la caméra cadrée sur
leur visage concentré – on ne voit pas
l’arme. Le son reproduit la respiration
des protagonistes, avant de se couper
une fois le coup parti. Dans Fallbeispiel (2006), à voir en ce moment au
Centre d’art contemporain d’Yverdon-
les-Bains, des danseurs tombent les
uns après les autres. On ne voit pas
leur chute: on l’entend. Et plus récemment, l’installation Setting (2011) rapportait – par l’entremise de comédiens – les témoignages de figurants
engagés dans un camp d’entraînement militaire étasunien en Bavière,
dernière étape avant le conflit irakien. A
l’image, un bruiteur et son intrigant
matériel donnent corps aux récits de
ces «Arabes de service», en général interprétés par des Allemands.
MOTS GLAÇANTS
Le monde et ses conflits s’invitent
aussi dans la toute dernière œuvre de
Gabriela Löffel, Embedded Language
(2013), encore inédite, autour du récit
d’un négociant d’armes polonais rencontré lors d’une foire spécialisée. En
résidence à Montréal, l’artiste a par la
suite organisé le doublage de l’interview. Au final, l’œuvre s’intéresse en
premier lieu au processus de décomposition du discours pour le «traduire» en partition de doubleur, avec
pauses, hésitations et autres rires nerveux. Les mots cyniques du marchand de mort, lorsqu’ils parviennent
tout de même à la surface, n’en sont
que plus glaçants.
Toujours très accessibles malgré
leur complexité, les œuvres de Gabriela Löffel sont difficilement vendables
en galerie: les financements de ses
pièces viennent principalement des
collectivités publiques et des nombreuses distinctions ou bourses reçues
depuis 2006. Aussi, des travaux comme Offscreen ou Embedded Language
prennent jusqu’à deux années pour
voir le jour. «Je veux à tout prix éviter
les raccourcis: le temps devient un
filtre», explique Gabriela Löffel. Et il
permet aussi de rajouter quelques
couches, le cas échéant.
Halle Nord, 1 pl. de l’Ile, Genève, jusqu’au
14 décembre, ma-sa 14h-18h, www.act-art.ch
Centre d’art contemporain d’Yverdon-les-Bains,
pl.
Pestalozzi,
expo
«Move
Movie»,
jusqu’au
26
janvier,
me-di
12h-18h,
www.centre-art-yverdon.ch
Samuel Schellenberg
Le Courrier Dezember 2013
34
Gabriela Löffel — Bühnen für den Krieg
Grosse Themen solle man als Künstler/in nur mit grosser Vorsicht angehen, sagt Gabriela Löffel. Die Gefahr der Verkürzung
sei stets vorhanden. Sie selbst beschäftigt sich mit dem Krieg,
mit dessen vielschichtigen Rahmenbedingungen. Im Moment
werden ihre Arbeiten in drei Ausstellungen gezeigt.
Bern, Genf, Yverdon-les-Bains — Es sind nicht die Bilder, die gemeinhin mit Krieg
assoziiert werden, die Gabriela Löffel (*1972) interessieren. Weder ist sie dem Dokumentarischen noch dem Spektakulären auf der Spur – vielmehr holt sie die meist
unsichtbaren Hintergründe ans Licht, die kleinen Nebenschauplätze, die Bühnen und
Apparaturen, welche sich im Frieden auf den Krieg beziehen, diesen mit unserem
Alltag verlinken und so erst möglich machen. Wie eine Chirurgin nähert sie sich dem
Kriegshandwerk an, seziert einzelne Facetten, fokussiert fast hypnotisch auf das
Fallen beispielsweise, zeigt in ‹Fallbeispiel›, 2006, wie Körper immer wieder zusammenbrechen, einknicken, zu Boden gehen. Ist jemand im Krieg gestorben, sagt man,
er sei gefallen, als ob man so dem Tod die Schwere nehmen kann. Eine andere Arbeit
zeigt Schiessende, und so nah ist die Künstlerin ihnen mit ihrer Kamera auf den Leib
gerückt, dass man die Nähe fast nicht aushalten kann, man hört die Personen atmen
und sieht in Zeitlupe, wie der Rückschlag ihre Mimik entstellt.
Es sind immer andere Schauplätze des Kriegerischen, mit denen sich die Künstlerin auseinandersetzt. Im vergangenen Jahr ist sie an die «International Defence Industry Exhibition» in Polen gereist, wo rund 400 Firmen aus 29 Ländern (darunter die
Schweiz) ihre «Waren» und «Dienstleistungen» anboten. Das Schlimmste, sagt Löffel,
war «dieses schreckliche Abstrakte». Die Kommerzialisierung des Kriegs schliesst
dessen Brutalität und Schrecken aus, ebenso wie das menschliche Gegenüber, das
es im Krieg zu töten gilt. «Wie werden diese Realitäten ausgeblendet», fragte sich die
Künstlerin und fotografierte, filmte und interviewte, wobei sie ihre Kameras als hilfreich empfand: «Sie waren meine Filter die vier Tage lang». Die Fotoserie – ‹ohne Titel›, 2012 – spiegelt Löffels distanziert analytischen Blick. Sie zeigt das sterile, bis in
alle Details durchdesignte Ambiente, die herausgeputzten Vertreter aus Wirtschaft,
Politik und Militär, die blitzblanken Waffen ästhetisch aufgereiht. Die Installation
‹Offscreen› ist den Schnittstellen von Realität und Fiktion gewidmet. Ausgehend
von den Erzählungen eines Schweizer «Kriegstouristen» liess Löffel einzelne seiner
Geschichten in den Babelsberger Filmstudios von Stuntleuten nachspielen, zudem
filmte sie die Studios selbst, den Apparat der Filmproduktion ab. Brita Polzer
→ Bern, Kornhausforum, bis 24.11. (Gruppenausstellung) ↗ www.kornhausforum.ch
→ Genf, Halle Nord, bis 14.12. (Einzelausstellung) ↗ www.halle-nord.ch
→ Yverdon, Centre d’art contemporain, bis 26.1. (Gruppenausstellung) ↗ www. centre-art-yverdon.ch
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Kunstbulletin 12/2013
Gabriela Löffel · Ohne Titel, 2012, Fotoserie/International Defence Industry Exhibition, Polen
Gabriela Löffel · Offscreen, 2012/2013, Mehrkanal-Videoprojektion, Erzählstimme auf Kopfhörer
BESPRECHUNGEN // BERN, GENF, YVERDON-LES-BAINS
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35
Setting
citysharing.ch
The complex audio-visual installation “Setting” by Swiss artist Gabriela Löffel starts out friendly enough. During the opening minutes of the work, the visitor finds herself in a
room plunged in total darkness, where peaceful sounds of chirping birds and the voice of a woman pour out of five speakers. The placing of the speakers throughout the room, each
transmitting a single aural element, ensures a “Surround” sound environment. The narrator, speaking French, is recounting curious events in which she participated. We quickly discover
that we are listening to a story that is not meant for our ears. Over a number of years, the woman has worked as an extra in a training camp for mostly American soldiers on their way to
combat in Kosovo, Iraq, or Afghanistan. Here, scenes that might occur in war zones are acted out with the help of extras, according to carefully planned scenarios. The sounds of birds
and rustling leaves seem to divert our attention from the sinister content of the woman’s story, but in fact create an aural backdrop for one of the poignant contradictions central in
“Setting”: the training camp, placed in the hills of rural Bavaria, Germany, is a site of imagination and simulation, a site of make-belief.
The thirty-two minutes of narration are a patchwork of various events and personal impressions from the training camp, as seen through the eyes of a single participant. The artist’s
laborious research process could be the basis of a completely different work. But for “Setting”, Löffel has chosen an approach that both mirrors the layering of reality inherent in the
hidden practices inside the training camp, as well as focuses on the complex relationships – political, experiential and aesthetic -, between war and its representation in (moving) images.
This latter thematic has become crucial since the first televised war in Kuwait under Bush senior, aired “live” on CNN.
During the first nine minutes, “Setting” shows no images. Then, a still image looms up on the left of two screens discernable in the darkened room. For quite some time, this image
remains poorly lit, making it difficult to distinguish what we see: a folded microphone-stand, a chair, the contours of a room. Although the narrator’s story is well underway, the image
remains fixated at the moment of an overture, waiting to be lit up, waiting for something to happen – as is essential to the moving image. Standing in front of a barely lit, still video
screen, our expectations are thwarted. Accustomed as we are to the unremitting flow of images, some visitors have even presumed a technical problem. But this voluntary withholding of
the image, frustrating indeed, throws us back onto ourselves and stimulates us to consider our bodily position in the dark. When images finally do flare up on either of two screens in the
room, they do not show scenes of war or their simulation. Rather than to redouble the problematic of simulation by presenting us with a staged reconstruction of events in the training
camp, Löffel shows a sound designer at work in his studio. The sound effects we see him producing underline or even create the mood of the narrator’s continuing story, which every now
and then builds up to a climax, speeding up to greater (emotional) force towards the end. Seeing the sound designer at work, however, creates discrepancies and dismantles the rhetorical
process. Eerie, undefined, impressive sound effects turn out to be made by such unexpected actions as breaking vegetables in two, running up and down iron stairs, blowing up a rubber
balloon, or rubbing together two ordinary bricks.
In a similar manner, the installation breaks down narrativity - any claim to believability -, by introducing layers of distance to the ungraspable reality of war. Why would a woman from
Bavaria speak French? The female voice we hear is that of a professional reader. This may lead us to incur that the narration too is mediated: it is the artist who has edited the interview
with the German extra, and who has chosen which fragments to use and in what order. On top of that, the pitch, tone and rhythm of the professional narrator’s voice lends signification
to the words.
The choices of process and technique, of what to show and what to tell, and most of all, how to show or tell it, contribute to a complex layering of reality, representation and experience.
They also enhance the feeling that is expressed at the end of the narrator’s autobiographical tale: even after so many years of hyper-realistic make-belief, she feels she cannot begin to
grasp the atrocity of war that is “so horrible… and so very far away…”. The interviewed extra thus functions as a stand-in for our own, highly mediated access to war. Listening to
someone who was trained to simulate life in war-zones is perhaps the closest we can get. But most of all, “Setting” succeeds in giving a rare insight into the visual mechanisms with which
we are ourselves “trained” to experience and judge events, choices and people involved in the unfathomable horror of war. And it is not without reason that this word is evoked: just
like Conrad’s captain Kurtz’s famous phrase “the horror… the horror…” has come to replace the unspeakable “heart of darkness”, so Hollywood’s adaptation of it guides our imaginary
of war in the modern era. The closest the interviewed extra in “Setting” comes to imagining the actual experience of war, is when she describes how she thinks she would feel if actual
helicopters were approaching. It is impossible not to be reminded of the helicopter scene in Apocalypse Now. “Setting” contests this tyranny of the image.
MEREL VAN TILBURG
Art historian, Paris, 2013
36
Gabriela Löffel — la fiction comme
expérience des réalités
L’existence d’un camp d’entraînement militaire américain implanté en Allemagne a déclenché les récentes recherches de
Gabriela Löffel. Celles se concentrent avec acuité dans une
installation vidéo-audio ‹Sitting› présentée dans l’exposition
‹Crosnier Extra Muros› de la Société des Arts de Genève qui lui a
décerné son Prix artistique. Françoise Ninghetto
C’est la voix qui d’abord nous happe dans la semi-obscurité de l’installation. Une voix
de femme qui, sans affect, parle d’insurgés, de soldats, de bombes, d’ambulanciers,
de fusils… Rapidement on comprend qu’il ne s’agit pas du récit d’une guerre réelle
et vécue mais celui de l’expérience troublante qui consiste à endosser le rôle de figurant dans un camp d’entraînement militaire. Ce n’est pourtant pas sur cette zone
militaire que Gabriela Löffel va diriger sa caméra. Mais sur ce que peut révéler le
décalage entre le réel et l’imaginé, l’existant et le simulacre.
Elle avait déjà commencé cette (en)quête sur le lien entre la guerre et le langage
dans une vidéo précédente, ‹The Easy Way Out›, 2010, qui avait eu pour point de départ une discussion presque furtivement enregistrée au bar d’un hôtel situé au bord
de ce même camp bavarois.
Des trois personnes rencontrées, un soldat, une vendeuse de voitures et la propriétaire de l’hôtel, nous ne connaîtrons pas leur visage. La conversation constitue
l’épitase du travail qui tente de comprendre l’entrelacement des fils du discours,
des mots et des silences. Elle est mise en scène, retranscrite, traduite et lue par
trois interprètes professionnels qui leur donnent corps comme un comédien pourrait le faire, à cela près que ces traducteurs sont dans des ‹cabines› individuelles,
grises, casque d’écoute sur la tête, stylo à la main et micro à portée de voix. Ce
procédé de distanciation est complété par le dispositif de l’installation vidéo :
même cadrage pour les trois personnages, projection frontale sur trois écrans et,
pour le spectateur, un casque sur la tête, il ne lui est donné d’entendre qu’un interprète à la fois et donc de ne saisir la ‹conversation› que par des monologues fragmentés par des silences.
Un territoire ambigu
Gabriela Löffel · Setting, 2011, Vidéo Still, Installation Vidéo-Audio
48
Revenons à ‹Setting› et à l’expérience liée à ce camp militaire dont Gabriela Löffel
a appris l’existence par l’Internet. Passablement flouté sur les images satellites de
Google Earth, on le découvre difficilement, presque ironiquement situé dans l’une des
grandes réserves naturelles d’Allemagne, en Bavière, dans la région de Grafenwöhr.
Repris comme camp d’entraînement de l’armée des États-Unis d’Amérique (il a fêté
son centenaire en 2010, agrandi sous Hitler il a également servi de camp de détention), il comprend en permanence plus de mille soldats. Vaste zone isolée par des fils
de fer barbelés dans laquelle les civils n’y entrent pas sans autorisation, il constitue
un territoire limite, frontière et, surtout ambigu. La possible justification de ce camp
FoKuS // GAbrIeLA LöFFeL
49
37
américain en territoire allemand réside dans une notion que l’information politicomilitaire a fait, depuis quelques années, entrer dans notre mode de pensée, la guerre
préventive. « Dernier terrain où s’exercent les soldats américains avant d’être envoyés en Irak ou en Afghanistan », il est, remarque Gabriela Löffel , « un univers où la
vie est mise en jeu pour essayer de préserver cette même vie ».
Après une visite guidée du camp, organisée par une association locale pour les
habitants de la région, Gabriela Löffel savait qu’il avait trouvé là matière à réflexion
et qu’elle allait y engager son travail vidéo. Elle y retourne une deuxième fois en 2010,
lors d’une fête germano-américaine populaire durant laquelle des soldats faisaient
visiter des tanks stationnés le long de rues bordées de maisons aux formes arabisantes. Mais que faire avec ces informations, finalement si fragmentaires qu’elles
paraissent aisément réductibles à des stéréotypes ?
La parole et les silences
Gabriela Löffel ne se sert pas de la caméra pour enregistrer des images ‹en direct›,
le reportage et le documentaire ne constituent pas son terrain d’action. Sa caméra
est bien un outil d’observation mais de situations – il n’est sans doute pas erroné de
parler de mises en scène – qu’elle crée. Qui ne sont jamais décontextualisées du sujet qu’elle veut traiter. Mais elle manie l’obliquité. C’est dans cet écart, provoqué par
sa manière de se d’aborder le sujet, que son travail ouvre à des réflexions sur le sens
de ce que l’on comprend du monde lorsqu’on prend conscience de la fragmentation
de nos connaisances.
Ainsi, ‹Setting› sera une nouvelle étape dans sa réflexion autour de la parole. À
la suite de sa deuxième visite du camp, elle cherche à obtenir des informations plus
précises sur ceux qui, face aux soldats, jouent le rôle des ennemis : les figurants. Ces
Gabriela Löffel (*1972, oberburg) vit à Genève et berne
2002–2003 Akademie der bildenden Künste, Wien
2000–2005 eSbA, ecole supérieure des beaux-arts Genève
expositions
2008 ‹In Progress› , ProGr, bern ; ‹Selection 2007IS› , ATA, San Francisco 2009 Duplex, Genève ; «Anonyme Zeichner N°10» Kunstraum Kreuzberg/bethanien, berlin
2010 Standard/Deluxe, Lausanne ; ‹The easy way out› Galerie ex-Machina, Genève ; Schweizer Videokunst, Landshut
2011 ‹Crosnier extraMuros› , Le Commun, Genève ; rodeo12, Genève
derniers, communément des Allemands (actuellement préférence est donnée à des
figurants arabes), sont engagés pour des périodes de trois semaines durant lesquelles ils endossent différents rôles, blessé, villageois attaqué, terroriste, insurgé…
Leur contrat leur impose de taire le travail qu’ils ont effectué pour l’armée américaine. Malgré cette interdiction, Gabriela Löffel a réussi à rencontrer deux figurants
qui ont accepté de lui raconter leur si particulière expérience. Pas de déclarations
politiques, ils égrènent des situations vécues dans un réel hors du réel… Leurs récits
rappellent ces jeux de rôles qui à la fin des années 1960, à la suite de la parution du
‹Seigneur des Anneaux›, 1966, prirent une forme nouvelle créée par Gary Gygax, le
‹Chainmail›. Ces ‹jeux de guerre› qui connaissent une florissante postérité prolongée
dans les jeux vidéo.
Tout à l’écoute de la narration des situations guerrières, l’image vient nous surprendre. Celles que l’on voit sur les deux écrans sont muettes, elles ne sont en rien
illustratives. Muettes mais pas silencieuses : elles montrent un bruiteur roulant sa
valise, marchant sur du gravier, tordant une laitue, agitant un baguette… Des sons
qui évoquent un corps en léger mouvement, un corps qui se fige, le vent qui bruisse.
Cette présence du son, un peu insolite, renvoie aux bruits incessants et puissants qui
dominent la campagne alentour du camp. Hors de vue, la guerre fictive transmet, par
les bruits des avions, des hélicoptères et des tirs, l’insupportable de sa réalité. On
ne s’étonne pas d’apprendre que Gabriela Löffel cite Karl Kraus (1974-1936) comme
une de ses références intellectuelles. Ce satiriste qui a stigmatisé la guerre et le bellicisme tout autant que le faux-semblant généralisé du monde ‹développé› moderne
qui n’est pas moins barbare qu’auparavant mais qui a seulement appris à mieux se
farder. Karl Kraus qui a consacré une grande partie de son travail à lire attentivement
la presse pour l’analyser et en montrer l’imposture à partir de « l’usage qu’elle fait
du langage, de la déformation du sens et de la valeur, de la façon dont sont vidés et
déshonorés tout concept et tout contenu ».
Françoise Ninghetto est historienne de l’art et conservateur au Mamco. [email protected]
Gabriela Löffel · The easy way out, 2010, Installation Vidéo-Audio, Galerie ex-Machina, Genève. Foto d’exposition: Erika Irmler
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≥ ‹Sitting› sera présentée par Gabriela Löffel à bâle, Swiss Art Awards 2011 ≥ Gabriela Löffel, ‹Sitting›, 2011, Installation vidéo-audio, Voix : Miruna Coca-Cozma, Sound Design: Daniel Hug. Abteilung Kulturelles de la Ville de berne. Département Cinéma/cinéma du réel de la Head-Genève.
FoKuS // GAbrIeLA LöFFeL
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Gabriela LöffeL - gabriela loeffel siteweb

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