PARTICOLARE
SWISS ALPS

Mirrormap, curated by Valentinas Klimašauskas (curator and Director, CAC Vilnius), features works by internationally acclaimed artists, including Lynn Hershman Leeson, Aria Dean, Seth Price, and Simon Denny. 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.

Mediums and Mind Control, curated by Piper Marshall. The exhibition addresses the fraught interplay of occultism and technological innovation. Incanting, channeling, and hypnotizing feature in this program which demonstrates how the methods have long functioned as potent practices for care of the self. These artists welcome and harness an otherworldly energy to induce altered mental states, to convene with the past in the present, and to create a reprieve from external political and commercial forces. By featuring a range of techniques from sacred movements and embodied avatars to automatic writing and alter making– this program charts an unsung genealogy to demonstrate artists addressing and reckoning with topics of identity, spirituality, community, social difference, and connection.

Moving / Immovable I. A public art installation Moving / Immovable I in the heart of Gstaad Promenade anchors the festival in situ, examining the paradox of public art as simultaneously fixed and transformative—rooted in place yet capable of altering its context. François-Xavier Lalanne’s “Little Donkey”, for instance, bears flowers destined to wilt over time: a nature morte en plein air. Philippe Cramer’s marble sculptures, delicately twisted like paper, suggest lightness and ephemerality, while evoking the mutable structure of DNA—a reference to the unsettling fluidity enabled by technologies such as CRISPR. Contrastingly, works like Loris Cecchini’s “Aborexence” simulate organic vitality but remain suspended in stainless steel stasis, offering a cryogenic vision of nature. Jenny Brosinski’s “Yeti” and Richard Hoeck’s and John Miller “Dog Chew Toy” inject playful dissonance, destabilising assumptions about what responds, reacts, or resists.

Mirrormap, curated by Valentinas Klimašauskas & Kolja Gläser. The exhibition interrogates the pervasive influence of technology on human existence.

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. Curated by Valentinas Klimašauskas (curator and Director, CAC Vilnius), the exhibition features works by internationally acclaimed artists, including Lynn Hershman Leeson, Aria Dean, Seth Price, and Simon Denny. 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.

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.