Particolare

PARTICOLARE
SWISS ALPS

ART, FILM
& PERFORMANCE

Particolare proposes a new format: a multi-site alpine art festival.

A series of exhibitions that explore sculpture and moving image both as media and as a exploratory metaphor for continuum between fixed and transient states. Lens/Crans-Montana, Gstaad and St. Moritz are the prestigious venues chosen and activated for the season, attracting art enthusiasts and collectors from all over the region and beyond. These thoughtfully orchestrated events aim to be a polyphonic inquiry into the interplay between digitality, materiality, and the self. Innovative, immersive, and profoundly moving.

WINTER 2024–2025
SWISS ALPS

MIRRORMAP

  • Curators: Kolja Gläser & Valentinas Klimašauskas
  • 29 December 2024 - 28 February, 2025
  • Sculptures: Lac Louché, surroundings of Fondation Opale, Route de Crans 1, 1978 Lens

Mirrormap features works by internationally acclaimed artists. The exhibition interrogates the pervasive influence of technology on human existence. The responses, oscillating between optimism and unease, are situated against the dramatic backdrop of rugged alpine nature and sleek contemporary architecture—a site-specific articulation of humanity’s complex entanglement with the machine.

Mirror neurons, one of the major scientific discoveries of the last decade, react to the actions we observe in others. They fire again in the same way when we recreate these observed actions ourselves, fostering interconnection and human empathy. The exhibition draws parallels between the brain’s mirror neurons and the neural networks of artificial intelligence, exploring how our capacity for empathy is reflected and amplified in biological, sociopolitical, and technological systems. By exploring the intersection of art, neuroscience, and technology, the exhibition offers a multidimensional exploration of empathy that transcends traditional boundaries and fosters a deeper understanding of our common post-human condition.

The exhibition draws inspiration from the mirrored façade of the Opale Foundation and the lake in front of it, as well as from its Australian Aboriginal art collection.

ARTISTS:

Mitchell Anderson, Jonas Aničas, Alice Bucknell, Lou Cantor, Joshua Citarella, Jesse Darling, Aria Dean, Simon Denny, Constant Dullaart, Ryan Gander, Zsófia Keresztes, Lina Lapelytė, Lynn Hershman Leeson, John Miller & Richard Hoeck, Katja Novitskova, Agnieszka Polska, Mikhail Romadin, Mika Schwarz, Jura Shust, Lesia Vasylchenko, Peter Wächtler.

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MEDIA AND MIND CONTROL

  • Curators: Kolja Gläser and Piper Marshall
  • 14-16 February 2025
  • Grand Hotel Bellevue, Untergstaadstrasse 17, 3780 Gstaad
  • Opening hours: 13-16 Feb. from 11-3pm

MAZE Art Gstaad returns in 2025 with an exciting film and video program. This year’s flagship artistic project, “Media and Mind Control,” is a rich selection of moving image, highlighting artists who summon and channel energy to disturb embodied boundaries, from the inner limits of the mind to the outer limits of the physical world, with some even opening a portal to the otherworldly.

The program features media drawn from the last fifty years, from the groundbreaking stroboscopic Flicker by Tony Conrad to the feedback in Roly Poly by Brody Condon. Artists take up and modulate audio, text, rhythm, and light to issue an alternate cadence and induce counter memories, with the goal of bringing about emotional, social, and spiritual transformation. Highlights include Adrian Piper’s Funk Lessons, a powerful tool repurposing dance movements and rhythmic, African American music to reckon with difference and Dan Graham’s prescient Rock My Religion an analysis of that intertwines the rapture induced by alternative religious practice, on one hand, and by rock and roll, on the other, to argue for youth music as a spiritual intonation. The screening is capstoned by a sequence spotlighting films that open up portals to the cosmic and centers the work of Saodat Ismailova and Yen Chao. The screening is kindly hosted by Le Grand Bellevue Gstaad.

Ecstatic Processes
Can you secure self-possession while seemingly being possessed? These artists analyze, conjure, and perform entrancement with the goal to alter aspects of the imagination and affective, physical response.

Threshold Experiences
In these films, steady rhythm is modulated and morphed into a form of incantation. Exploiting editing and feedback, the featured artists induce a hypnotic experience to deliver viewers from the constraints of language, on one hand, and the habits of association on the other.

Down to Earth
Taking us from the banks of the Amu Darya river in Uzbekistan, to the Amis territory on the rural east coast of Taiwan, to the depths of geospace, these artists direct their focus toward the earth and open up a discussion of the entwinement of technology, memory, and the occult, in part by communing with the landscape.

Venue and screening times:
Cinema Bellevue
Le Grand Bellevue Hotel
Gstaad, CH

Feb 14 and 16: 11-2pm
Feb 15: 11-2pm & 8pm-midnight

ARTISTS:

Samuel Beckett, Brody Condon, Tony Conrad, Dan Graham, Saodat Ismailova, Alex McQuilkin, Shana Moulton, Adrian Piper, Yen Chao Lin, Yin Ju Chen

MIRRORMAP

  • Curators: Kolja Gläser & Valentinas Klimašauskas
  • Opening performance by Lina Lapelyte: 29 December

MOVING / IMMOVABLE I

  • Sculptures: Promenade, 29 December - 4 March, all day

MIRRORMAP

  • Screening program curated by: Kolja Gläser & Valentinas Klimašauskas
  • Giant screening: Grand Hotel des Bains Kempinski, Via Mezdi 27
  • Screening dates: TBC

Mirror neurons, one of the major scientific discoveries of the last decade, react to the actions we observe in others. They fire again in the same way when we recreate these observed actions ourselves, fostering interconnection and human empathy. The exhibition draws parallels between the brain’s mirror neurons and the neural networks of artificial intelligence, exploring how our capacity for empathy is reflected and amplified in biological, sociopolitical, and technological systems. By exploring the intersection of art, neuroscience, and technology, the exhibition offers a multidimensional exploration of empathy that transcends traditional boundaries and fosters a deeper understanding of our common post-human condition.

ARTISTS:

Mitchell Anderson, Alice Bucknell, Aria Dean, John Miller & Richard Hoeck, Agnieszka Polska, Lesia Vasylchenko

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MOVING / IMMOVABLE II

  • Grand Hotel des Bains Kempinski, Via Mezdi 27
  • Opening hours: 20-23 Feb, all day and evening
  • ‍

The exhibition, organized by CultTech in partnership with MAZE, probes the dichotomies that animate Moving / Immovable: organic versus inorganic, soft versus hard, mutable versus unyielding. The exhibition interrogates the pervasive influence of technology on human existence. The responses, oscillating between optimism and unease, are situated against the dramatic backdrop of rugged alpine nature.

CALENDAR

  • DATE
    TIME
    EVENT
    DETAILS
    LOCATION
  • 28 Dec
    19.00 Hs.

    Opening of Mirrormap's Sculpture Parcours

    Followed by a project by stylist Sarah Bounab and a chic raclette evening with DJ in the Caves du Prieuré de Lens.
    Around Lac Louché
  • 29 Dec
    16.00 Hs.

    Alberto Lysy International Violin Competition concert and creation of the quartet «Iter» on Swiss melodies

    By Tristan Seewer (in collaboration with the Gstaad New Year Music Festival)
    St-Niklaus Kapelle
  • 29 Dec
    17.00 Hs.

    Guided Tour of Moving/Immovable I on the Gstaad Promenade

    Followed by a performance by Lina Lapelyte & a dinner cocktail
    Gstaad Promenade
  • 29 Dec

    Mirrormap Opening at Private Chalet

    Contact Nour Bisevac at
    vip@mazepresents.com
    for more details
    Private Chalet, Gstaad
  • 8 Feb

    Cocktail & Dinner with a music performance by Auguste in collaboration with Vinylson

  • 8 Feb
    19.00 Hs.

    Installation by Swiss stylist Sarah Bounab

    Followed by musical dinner in the Caves du Prieuré in collaboration with Biennale Son.
    Caves du Prieuré
  • 10 Feb

    Mirrormap Sculptures Opening

    Fondation Opale, Route de
    Crans 1, 1978 Lens.
  • 16 Feb
    17.00 Hs.

    Opening of Mirrormap’s Film program

    Around Lac Louché