OM - Body & Space Residencies - July 2025

 

In July, as part of the OM – Body & Space project, a residency was held featuring two guest artists from L’Abri – Geneva: Jasmin Sisti and Hugo Langlade.

This cultural exchange is part of the partnership between OM Choreographic Center and L’Abri – Geneva, a cultural space dedicated to supporting emerging artists across a range of fields – music, dance, visual arts, theatre, writing, and design. Since 2018, L’Abri has focused its activity on the long-term support of artistic processes, placing an emphasis on research and development. Artists in residence are offered time, space, and resources for creation, collaboration, and experimentation – a process which, when appropriate, may culminate in a production or public presentation.

At the end of the residency, on Friday, July 25, at 6:00 PM, at OM Choreographic Center, the public is invited to step into the behind-the-scenes world of the two artists’ creative process. Jasmin Sisti, performer and choreographer, focuses her research on the body and on creative practices that process suffering and unfulfillment, while Hugo Langlade, visual artist and musician, highlights visual elements closely linked to digital documentation through mobile phones.

The residency is part of the program OM – Body & Space. This cultural project is co-financed by The Administration of the National Cultural Fund. The project does not necessarily represent the official position of The Administration of the National Cultural Fund. AFCN shall not be held liable for the project's content or any use to which the project outcome might be put. These are the sole responsibility of the beneficiary of the funding.

„A piece of ice melting on the hand:
As it becomes water, it slips cold between the fingers,
Uncatchable." (Sono come un pezzo di ghiaccio che si scioglie sulla mano:
mentre diventa acqua scivola freddo tra le dita,
incatturabile.)

„_ In remission_ is a research that delves into building creative practices that allow mourning, processing and letting go. It explores the physical and mental state of liminal and transitory spaces, whether exterior or interior to oneself. By accepting those unproductive and unattractive feelings, how can we transform them into dances that express the grey zones of embetweens, the continuous necessity of going, the transformation of the self? I found very inspiring the processes of organic decompositions : there is enormous beauty into seeing a flower sprouting, but powerful movement in a decaying apple. Yet, It is not to conceive them as opposite, rather complementary poles on a spectrum of continuous interacting and mutual redefining. Then, how is that space between the sprouting and the not yet dead? The space of becoming instead of being? Navigating the limbo of processing, where do we go? Do we permit ourselves to explore that uncatchable places of memories and echos, states of confusion and dissociation?”

Jasmin Sisti

„During my residency in Cluj-Napoca, I developed a series of sounds and images around the omnipresence of smartphones and electronic tools in public. As a visual artist and musician, I’m particularly drawn to how digital devices shape our behaviors, experiences, and modes of documentation.

This body of work is part of a broader speculative project titled CELEBRATION, which investigates our sensitivity to phones in festive contexts. I developed a personal gesture: when someone in front of me lifts their phone to film or take a picture, I instinctively capture their screen—documenting the way they are documenting. This act, which could be described as a kind of analog repost, allows me to experience the moment through someone else’s framing, while still being physically present.

It also opens the door to a recursive chain: someone else might photograph my phone, capturing me, capturing another screen, and so on. This layered form of seeing echoes the concerns raised by artist Hito Steyerl in her 2013 film How Not to Be Seen, where she explores visibility and disappearance in an age of constant surveillance. Steyerl reminds us: “Resolution determines visibility, because anything that is not captured by resolution becomes invisible.” In my work, I ask: what is visible? What is shared? And what remains truly lived?”

Hugo Langlade