Image from Burningcollection.tv, 2019. Fragmentin and Lauren Huret
The Verbier 3-D Foundation is pleased to announce Swiss artist collective Fragmentin as our 2022 Artists-in-Residence.
While residing within a dynamic community in the Alps, the residency will focus on the development of a sculptural work examining the global topics of water and climate concerns inspired by the materials, technologies and ecological knowledge sourced from the surrounding landscape of Verbier, Switzerland.
Working with curators Alexa Jeanne Kusber and Paul Goodwin, the resident artists will collaborate with glaciologists, academics and the local community to start a research behind the concept of Obsology - a neologism coming from a mix of the words obsolescence and archaeology with a focus on the topic of Post-digital archaeology.
How will future archaeologists study us? Will our considerations on issues such as digitalization and the climate crisis last ? What traces will be left over for future generations to remember ours ? And in which form?
Fragmentin is an artist collective based in Lausanne, Switzerland, founded in 2014 and composed by Laura Perrenoud, David Colombini and Marc Dubois. At the crossroads of art and engineering, Fragmentin’s work questions the impact of the digital on everyday life by investigating these technologies' disposition towards control and opacity. Influenced by the likes of Alain Damasio, Eric Sadin and James Bridle, Fragmentin's works are often conceived as spaces for discussion on crucial contemporary themes such as climate change. Through installation, video, interaction and performance, the studio’s artworks demystify complex systems and reveal the tension between emergent technologies, society and the environment.
Fragmentin’s work has been exhibited in Switzerland at the Haus der elektronischen Künste HeK (Basel, CH), Kunsthalle Zurich (Zurich, CH), The Mapping Festival (Geneva, CH), The Landart Biennale Art Safiental (Tenna, CH), NOV gallery (Geneva, CH) and la Becque (La Tour-de-Peilz, CH). The trio’s installations have also travelled to The ZKM (Karlsruhe, DE), Jeu de Paume (Paris, FR), The Kunstraum (Vienna, AU), the Centre Culturel Suisse (Paris, France), the Prague Quadrennial of Performance Art and Space (Prague, CZ), The Mirage Festival (Lyon, FR), the Getxophoto festival in Bilbao (Spain), Cairotronica (Egypt), The Shenzhen media art festival (China), The Cello Factory Gallery (London, UK), The National Theatre (Londres, UK) and to the York Art Gallery (York, UK).
Several institutions have acquired Fragmentin's works for their permanent collection. These include: HeK Basel (Displuvium, 2019) and the Art Foundation PAX (The Weather Followers, 2018).
While continuing to exhibit their work in museums and to develop collaborations with galleries, Fragmentin aims to make art and its debates more accessible to the audience and more rooted in the public space, notably by proposing interventions in natural landscapes, urban spaces (Art for Architecture), inside a church or by creating online experiences.
The Verbier 3-D Foundation’s mission is to support emerging and established talent by pushing artists out of their comfort zones and by fostering development that might not be possible in the studio space. The 3-D Foundation’s artist residencies generate an aesthetic sensibility in the arts and for artists to develop innovative series of works and creative propositions in situ that can provide a prism to observe the fragility, but also the beauty, of our environment in a new light.
The residency is planned for a one month duration in April 2022, followed by a 2-year exhibition and education programme.
fragment.in