A man and a woman in a big embrace. The TV shows a couple dancing in a Hollywood musical. The man and woman attempt to follow suit, but their movements are wooden and their feet leaden, as if under extra gravitational pull. Caught in a web of stereotypes they try again and again, but their perseverance completely robs their dance of the lightness of the original. All that remains is the melancholy cast of failure on their exhausted faces.

The tempting, the deceiving, the fleeting and the oppression of happiness eerily transformed into a theatrical work which cleverly and skilfully applies the language of film and its technology.
A wordless, forceful film with a carefully arranged soundtrack – a miniature work of art
Laudatio for the Basel Film Prize 2011

Garden of species shows appearances of artificial nature, which we collected on our journeys during the last ten years. We took photos in zoos, botanical gardens, and in the streets of several citys. The text fragments basically come from two articles; „Why do we look at animals?“ from John Berger, and „Garden of Species“ from Lucius Burckhardt. Lucius Burckhardt’s article concerns the try of reconstructing garden eden. John Berger’s text reflects the replacement of nature with substitutes. The speaker asks: „Are there two creations or were there two adams?“ It seems like he strolls through a desperate and failed second creation, made by men.

For more pictures go to www.estherhiepler.ch

more pictures: www.estherhiepler.ch

For the exhibition „Going Places – Marseille“ we combined photos, videos and textfragments into the installation „Ville imaginaire“ – „imaginairy town“. During a four month stay in Marseille we took photos in the city, and collected texts and filmfragments concerning Marseille. Our interest was the city as an object of projection: The city is invented by everybody who is looking at it, strolls through it, or even just hears about it. Rumors and images hang over the city like a fog. What is true? What fabricated? Who really knows the city? Which parts are accessible for whom? Who has the power to make statements about the city? Who has the power to form the city? Which rumors and images take over? Where do reality and imagination blend? 



The exhibiton „Going Places Marseille“ was curated by Annina Zimmermann und Nic Bezemer and showed three artists’ positions concerning Marseille: Tina Z’Rotz, Copa & Sordes, Esther Hiepler & Max Philipp Schmid.

„The 4th Country“ shows a trip into an area of borders, where the three countries of Switzerland, France and Germany come together. Equipped with rucksack and camera we crossed the area within spitting distance of our home in Basel. We lived in hotels like we were tourists on a voyage to a far away country. The trip evolved like a thriller without action in a no mans land between abandoned borders, brush, community gardens, industry, family home colonies and dubious hotel rooms.

Production: Bruno de Chenérilles for Dreiländeroper

english translation coming soon

The Swiss pavilion at the Expo in Saragossa features the video installation „Unter dem See“ / „Under the Lake“. An eighteen meter long, hanging sail serves as the projection surface. In a completely darkened room the observer finds himself under the projection. From below, you see a large, rather undefined water basin in which a man is swimming. The nature and quality of the water change constantly. The man’s body and skin react to the continuously new surroundings – sometimes relaxed and languorous, then defensive and protective. The images call forth both pleasant and sensuous but also eerie and threatening feelings – thereby making the ambivalent potential of water very perceptible.

The actor Jo Dunkel was asked to improvise a fit of rage. The video material taken of this tantrum was shown to the actor in slow motion. Then he was called upon try to reenact and imitate the video-technically reduced-speed version of his own fit of anger. Because the sound in the slow motion version could not be heard, Jo Dunkel is forced to guess the sounds purely from the movements of the mouth.

Through this experimental transfer his anger seems to become fear, although this was not the intention of the actor.

Full of positive energy and the urge to move forward, this wanderer strides through nature, a pioneer discovering new land, a man on his way into the future. As his happiness increases to euphoria, his gait becomes increasingly heavy. As if in a nightmare, his movements seem to load more and more energy, yet he has almost come to a standstill. Like a running machine that is blocked, at the end it seems he is on the verge of explosion. His energy is not only taking him nowhere, it is slowly turning against him.

The point of departure is a study made by Paul Ekman, researcher of facial expressions, who attempts to categorize human emotional expressions based on facial muscular impulses. In doing so, he investigates the question of which facial expressions are innate - or „natural“ – and which have been influenced by a specific cultural environment. For his research, Ekman isolated 40 individual muscle movements, defining the various facial expressions as the combination of those movements. His descriptions of the separate emotional feelings read like exaggeratedly precise director’s instructions. And that is exactly the way that they are used in this piece.

One views this Garden from above – it consists of six monitors showing flowers as they emerge and plunge when light passes in and around them, accompanied in the background by a crackling sound. The slow, repeated loops project the visual impression of being underwater and fireworks all in one. Tamed marvels of nature, which transform the monitors into deep vessels and the images of the flowers into a seductive play of movement.

Isabelle Zürcher, text in the room at the exhibition in the Kunsthaus Baselland