Orbit Screenings IV

20.02 2026

Adaptations
Compiled by Marc Jauss*

The record collection of the La Dépendance Residency serves as starting point for a research process
focused on moving images. Based on the collection’s inventory, online accessible videoworks by the featured
artists were identified and assembled. The material spans a broad spectrum of formats — from music videos,
essays, and audiovisual works to documentaries, interviews and trailers, as well as fragments, poems,  edits,
and improvised fanrecordings.

Selected tracks from the record collection and videos

Among others: Alessandra Novaga, Annea Lockwood, Charlemagne Palestine, Daniel Hennemand, Denis Rollet, Ellen Fullman, Hanne Lippard, Hideki Umezawa & Giuseppe Cordaro, Julian Sartorius,
Laura Cannell, Laurent Güdel, Nils Bech & Bendik Giske, Pablo Altar, Tout Bleu, Walter Maioli & Nirodh, and many more…
+ Mœbius & Plank: Material Album appreciation by Jeremy Morris, and extracts from the documentaries NewMusic: Sounds and Voices from the Avant-Garde by Hans G. Helms
and The Williams Fairey Brass Band by Ludovic Cantais

Running time: 1:15min

*Marc Jauss (1984, Zurich) is a independent curator and visual designer with a focus on multimedia outputs. His work centers on collaborative projects that bring together music, art, and moving images. He studied Visual Communication at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK) and runs the platforms fromheretillnow and E.N.C., through which he explores experimental forms of presentation in both public and digital spaces.

Orbit Screenings III

23.01 2026

Fields
Compiled by Clara Chavan* and Selma Meuli*

Fields draws from the literal and conceptual context of La Dépendance, a rural artist residency and site of encounter and exchange. It features works  that are critical of their times; moving-image pieces addressing the consequences, illnesses and absurdities of capitalism, while suggesting possible responses.

David Wojnarowicz, Beautiful People, 1988, 34’7”
Martha Rosler, Flower Fields, 1974, 3’37”
Liam Gillick, Underground (Trailer for a Book), 2004 , 6’58”
Bernadette Corporation, Hell Frozen Over, 2000, 19’22”

Tony Cokes, Ad Vice, 1999, 6’36
Guadalupe Ruiz & Janosch Perler, La Pastora de las Cosas, 2022, 16’56”
Meriem Bennani, 2 Lizards, 2020, 23’02”
Rafael França, As If Exiled In Paradise, 1986, 9’00”

Infos:

David Wojnarowicz, Beautiful People, 1988, 34’7”

“Beautiful People follows Jesse Hultberg, Wojnarowicz’s former bandmate in 3 Teens Kill 4, as he dresses in his drag persona, the hippie-era singer Melanie Safka, and departs New York City for an upstate lake. Primarily shot in black and white, most of the film focuses on Hultberg’s attentive preparation as he applies makeup and selects his gown and jewelry. In the taxi, passing views out the window shift from scenes of the city to the tree-lined highway. Arriving at a forest, Hultberg cautiously navigates the uneven terrain in stilettos, with a glamorous presence in distinct contrast to his surroundings. Sitting on the rocky lakeshore, Hultberg reaches his gloved palm toward the water. Upon contact, the film immediately shifts into color, revealing the vibrant red fabric of the gown and gloves. This colorful awakening marks the film’s melancholic end, as the final shot captures Hultberg disappearing into the water.

Wojnarowicz, a dedicated activist in addition to artist, ‘[saw] drag queens as true revolutionaries who fuck with visual codes of gender.’ His film foregrounds the expressive and radical potential of drag in the midst of the AIDS epidemic. Hultberg’s solitary performance also speaks to the isolating experiences of those who contracted AIDS and lost support from their families, workplaces, and the government.

Beautiful People was first presented at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in New York City for their One Night Stand Series.
The silent film was accompanied by a live sound performance by Wojnarowicz and Hultberg and a selection of songs, including Safka’s folk-rock song ‘Beautiful People,’ with lyrics resonating bittersweetly with the content of the film: ‘Beautiful people / You ride the same subway as I do every morning / That’s got to tell you something / We’ve got so much in common / I go the same direction that you do / So if you take care of me, maybe I’ll take care of you.’

This film was preserved with the support of the New York State Council on the Arts. State of the Arts NYSCA. The Fales Library & Special Collections New York University, New York, New York.”  – EAI

Martha Rosler, Flower Fields, 1974, 3’37”

“The low hills fronting the main California artery of Highway 5

exhibit a beautiful spectrum-like pattern, in stripes formed by the fields of flowers being grown there for commercial sale. The camera zooms in from a paused vehicle across the highway, revealing workers, many of them undocumented, stooping in the fields — but barely noticeable to cars flying past at highway speed. Later, in a run up Highway 5, the immigration police at their mobile roadblock pass by in a flash, as does a mobile Bank of America banking facility, roadside hitchhikers, and a person riding a horse. The road trip ends among the palm trees and glowing sunset of a Southern California night.” – Video Data Bank

Liam Gillick, Underground (Trailer for a Book), 2004 , 6’58”

“Underground (Trailer for a Book) has been created following Liam Gillick’s work Underground (Fragments of future histories) a work composed as a screenplay based on the very first science fiction novel, Fragments d’Histoire future, written in 1884 by Gabriel Tarde. Underground (Trailer for a book), screened on a Brionvegaâ Cuboglass TV, shows excerpts of Tarde’s text (translated in English) and Gillick’s screenplay, scrolling on the screen. Sentences appear and vanish in various colors and resolutions of image, carried along by a slow numeric whirling.”  – Ubu Web

This video was originally conceived as an installation and is now being shown for the first time as part of a video screening.

Bernadette Corporation, Hell Frozen Over, 2000, 19’22”

“Bernadette Corporation describes this work as “A fashion film about the

poetry of Stéphane Mallarmé and the color white.” Produced for the 2000 Walker Art Center exhibition Let’s Entertain, this short film employs a range of strategies to approach the idea of nothingness, emptiness,

and vacuity, with an eye to how these notions relate to contemporary mass-cultural entertainment. Juxtaposing “documentary” takes on a fashion shoot with footage of semiologist Sylvère Lotringer giving an impromptu lecture on Mallarmé on a frozen lake, Hell Frozen Over maintains an ambiguous stance from which to both critique and celebrate the power of surface.

With: Sylvere Lotringer, Bianca (New York Models), Arielle (Next). Voice-overs: Liz Bougatsos, Colin DeLand. Hair: Rick Radone. Make-up: Yuko Mizuno. Clothes: Vikor & Rolf, Andre Walker, Seth Shapiro. Music: Ben Williams, The Beatles, Kippenberger, Mozart, Cat Stevens, Schubert. Video Editing Equipment/Software: The Bohen Foundation.” – EAI

Tony Cokes, Ad Vice, 1999, 6’36

“Working with both video and music forms as a member of, respectively, the art collective X-PRZ and the band SWIPE, Cokes employs appropriation and re-presentation in his art. In Ad Vice his source material includes advertising slogans, rock lyrics, and music

videos. Cokes offers one phrase after another, rendered in an “edgy,” advertisement-ready typeface, superimposed on degraded video images of rock musicians. Addressing the viewer with direct questions or suggestions, Cokes poses bald statements that could be philosophical platitudes or commercial tag-lines. The soundtrack, a processed-guitar piece by SWIPE, resembles a “rock song,” but features inaudible lyrics, no chorus, and a deceptively shifting hook. Ad Vice inhabits the realm of the music-video, only to use that form’s language against itself in a subtle critique of the interactions of desire and commerce in a capitalist culture.

Concept/Form: Tony Cokes for X-PRZ. Music: Swipe 2.0 (1997). Type: Context by Jean-Paul Tremblay. DV Mastering: Scott Pagano.” – EAI

Guadalupe Ruiz & Janosch Perler, La Pastora de las Cosas, 2022, 16’56”

“In the film “La pastora de las cosas ” we walk through the studio andpersonal living space of visual artist Ruiz. The camera meticulously follows the position of the sun through the rooms of the house. In this way, circumstances similar to those in a photo studio are created, where the greatest control over images can be achieved through the control of lights. Objects and inhabitants become actors in a photographic walk that is simultaneously oriented to a daily routine and to the superior temporality of the sun. The video poetically connects image- and (living-) space and raises questions about our relationship towards things and objects.”

 – The artist

Meriem Bennani, 2 Lizards, 2020, 23’02”

“Cette série de vidéos d’animation est la première œuvre collaborative de Meriem Bennani et Orian Barki. Elle a été réalisée pendant le premier week-end de confinement, pour faire une pause dans leur travail de montage et d’animation.” – Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève

*Clara Chavan (*1996, Lausanne/CH) ist eine in Zürich lebende Kuratorin. Sie hat an der Universität Lausanne Kunstgeschichte und Digital Humanities studiert und ihre Masterarbeit an der Schnittstelle von Soziologie und bildender Kunst verfasst (2023). Seit 2020 hat sie mit Museen und unabhängigen Kunsträumen in der ganzen Schweiz zusammengearbeitet, darunter one gee in fog (Genf), WallStreet (Freiburg), Lokal-int (Biel), La Rada (Locarno), Tunnel Tunnel (Lausanne), das Kunstmuseum Appenzell, egg (Zürich) und CAN Centre d’art Neuchâtel. Von 2023 bis 2025 war sie Mitglied des Jury- und Kurator*innenteams von Plattform. Derzeit ist sie künstlerische Koordinatorin der Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg und Co-Kuratorin des unabhängigen Kunstraums Portland in Zürich-Oerlikon.

*Selma Meuli(*1997, CH) ist Kuratorin am Kunsthaus Biel Centre d’art Bienne (KBCB) und künstlerische Koordinatorin der Swiss Art Awards. Seit 2022 ist sie Mitglied der Jury und des Organisationsteams von Plattform. Zuvor arbeitete sie an Institutionen wie der Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen und dem WIELS in Brüssel. Sie war an zahlreichen Projekten im Lokal-int in Biel/Bienne sowie in der Krone Couronne, ebenfalls in Biel/Bienne, beteiligt. 2024 war sie Mitglied der Jury für den Manor Kunstpreis des Kantons Bern, der an den Performance-Künstler PRICE verliehen wurde. Selma Meuli studierte Kunstgeschichte und Politikwissenschaft an der Universität Lausanne und schliesst derzeit ihren Master in Kunstgeschichte an der Universität Basel ab. Sie lebt und arbeitet zwischen Biel/Bienne und Zürich.