Opening BPM 2024, Thann. Walk along the installation by Terri Weifenbach
This year, I had the pleasure of curating the preview of the Photography Biennial in Mulhouse. It's an Alsatian town near the Swiss border—a geographical crossroads. A land of frontiers, long disputed, with a dense history. The preview, however, took place in a satellite town of Mulhouse, at the top of the Thur River valley, whose fertile slopes have been suitable for cultivating vineyards and fine wines for centuries. It is called Thann, and it has a typical medieval past, historical vestiges of saints, castles, witches, relics, and beliefs among the mystical and religious. More recent history is less glorious. A new Thann has grown on the plains; there is a large chemical industry, among the oldest in Europe, and an uncertain prospect. The town is quiet. There is a sense of anticipation as if you are waiting for something that must happen, but you don't know when. I have experienced those atmospheres in other European places, poised between a past that barely survives in some "monumentalisations" and a certain embarrassment and discomfort of the present.
Opening BPM 2024, Thann. Public talk with the artists and curator.
In Thann the future appears more like a promise to be kept than a secret to reveal. In this context, I decided to include two interventions in line with the theme of the Biennale: impossible worlds. After all, places like Thann, I thought, are similar to many suspended realities, hibernated in their potential not yet expressed, and they can appear especially to young people as impossible worlds; that degree of denied possibility is indigestible to those who feel the need to force, to push, to grow and change, to realize. To those impatient to stay, allergic to the past when it comes to simply dusting it. And the young, or free, or rather wandering spirit usually challenges the impossible, in circumstances, in definitions, in horizons. For those who look at the sunset rather than at dawn, it is necessary to hold on to something, resist, and feel that the world still needs you, not to chase evolution, the current. As we age, memory becomes a crutch to hold on to. Until it too dissolves, it fades into nothingness. What are the boundaries of impossibility - ethical, moral, disciplinary, scientific? And again, are they related to consciousness or knowledge? When does a world become impossible? Are they words that fuel only abstract concepts? Do they exist only in the mind? The only way I have found to respond to the limits of language, to intellectual codifications, is a curatorial practice as moral actiing through participatory art. For this reason, the artists' participation appears more as interventions that fit into the urban fabric for Cowling or as landscape interference in Weifenbach. Both are "de-situated" from conventional venues: the first in the main institutional building, the other along one of the most popular cycle-pedestrian paths. Both temporarily occupy open public spaces and relate to them and to the people who pass through them.
Terri Weifenbach's installation view 'Clouds Physics', Thann, BPM, 2024. (courtesy Nigel Baldacchino)
Terri Weifenbach's installation view 'Clouds Physics', Thann, BPM, 2024. (courtesy Nigel Baldacchino)
Terri Weifenbach's installation view 'Clouds Physics', Thann, BPM, 2024. (courtesy Nigel Baldacchino)
Terri Weifenbach's installation view 'Clouds Physics', Thann, BPM, 2024. (courtesy Nigel Baldacchino)
Terri Weifenbach's exhibition is a walk punctuated by images that breathe new life and new colors into the landscape. The works fit almost symbiotically into the place and highlight the views as if they were many different alternating faces of nature. The photos first echo the banks of the river - which flows like an entropic and ineluctable destiny approaching - then the sides of the hills where for centuries, as in a painting, history has manifested itself as inhabitants through their close bond with the land and the sky, where all the water comes from. Taken from the 'Clouds Physics' project, the photographs are a hymn to atmospheric song and to meteorology that studies its expressions and whims, on which the fate of life often depends. In this multiplicity of observation points there is a synthesis of the human condition.
Terri's installation is situated on an infrastructure that connects Thann's present and past. It does so by crossing a constant historical landscape that has its roots along the flow of the river, or in the water. Water is the focus of observation in the 'Clouds Physics' project. The installation is a visual interference that engages those walking in a dialogue and creates an immersive experience where the works are like magnifying glasses, or sometimes natural glitches.
Terri Weifenbach's installation view 'Clouds Physics', Thann, BPM, 2024. (courtesy Nigel Baldacchino)
Terri Weifenbach's installation view 'Clouds Physics', Thann, BPM, 2024. (courtesy Nigel Baldacchino)
Terri Weifenbach's installation view 'Clouds Physics', Thann, BPM, 2024. (courtesy Nigel Baldacchino)
Vanessa Cowling's installation is a visual sculpture that interferes with the City Hall building, promoting its permeability. It provides a message extolling transparency and sustainability as a virtue of good political conduct. The South African artist's practice is steeped in research into the use of materials that are not harmful to human health and the environment, and therefore embodies an authentic sense of responsibility towards the next generations who will set foot on these lands. In Vanessa Cowling's images, the leaves, roots and branches express themselves, welcoming light and solar energy, letting them pass, reducing the distance between those inside and those outside the building. The installation invites us to a phytocentric perspective, in which nature is not exclusively at the service of man but in continuous osmosis with him.
Vanessa Cowling, installation view, Thann, BPM 2024. (Courtesy Vanessa Cowling)
Vanessa Cowling, installation view, Thann, BPM 2024. (Courtesy Vanessa Cowling)
Vanessa Cowling, installation view, Thann, BPM 2024. (Courtesy Vanessa Cowling)
This vision underlines the importance of territorial governance which is based on awareness of our actions and their impacts. The internal garden recreated by Vanessa invites a vital flowering in our homes, in our spaces. A "vegetal" self-portrait that documents various encounters, personal events and memories through flowers. These images fix like organic fossils, an attempt to conserve and remember. But it is also a reflection on the fact that sooner or later we accept that flowers fall, that life falls and that we cannot hold it for long, as sensitive paper does with light. And so what matters is perhaps transferring it to those who come after us. So that other flowers can sprout, and other memories nourish existence.
Opening BPM 2024, Thann. Public presentation of Vanessa Cowling's site specific installation at the Municipal House.
Vanessa Cowling, installation view, Thann, BPM 2024. (Courtesy Vanessa Cowling)
Vanessa Cowling, installation view, Thann, BPM 2024. (Courtesy Vanessa Cowling)
Vanessa Cowling, installation view, Thann, BPM 2024. (Courtesy Vanessa Cowling)
Terri Weifenbach was born in NYC, raised in Washington, DC and educated at the University of Maryland, Terri Weifenbach spent a dozen years from her twenties living in New Mexico and California. She now resides in France. Terri Weifenbach is also renowned as a teacher. In addition to national and international workshops, she has taught at the Corcoran College of Art and Design, Georgetown University and as Lecturer at American University. Bookmaking is central to Terri Weifenbach’s artistic practice. Since her first book, In Your Dreams, was published in 1997 she has authored twenty more titles including 'Cloud Physics', 'Lana', 'Politics of Flowers and Gift' (co-author Rinko Kawauchi). Publishers include Atelier EXB, The Ice Plant, Nazraeli Press, and Loosestrife Press. Weifenbach’s Instruction Manual concept realized and initiated Nazraeli press’s One Picture Book series with #01, #03 and #04. In Your Dreams was included in The Photobook: A History Volume II by Martin Parr and Gerry Badger.
Vanessa Cowling is a mother, lecturer and artist, currently living and working in Cape Town, South Africa. She graduated from the Michaelis School of Fine Art (UCT) with a BA Honours in 1998 after which she spent a number of years as a practicing photographic artist in New York, London and Edinburgh before returning home. Vanessa lectures part time in the Photography department at UCT and where she recently completed her MFA, earning a distinction. She was awarded the 2023 Tierney fellowship, and won the Paris based, international “Blurring the Lines” competition for her Masters work. Her work is featured at the 2024 Venice Biennial, at the Personal Structures Exhibition, and she has been invited by the same curator to create an installation at the Biennale de la Photographie de Mulhouse, Mondes Impossibles. Her research has a strong emphasis on sustainable photographic practices and the environment, questioning the role of photography in a changing landscape.
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