Catalogue > Un extrait vidéo au hasard

Maya Schweizer

Voices and Shells

Fiction expérimentale | 4k | couleur et n&b | 18:10 | Allemagne, France | 2020

Tout commence dans l‘obscurité, on entend de l‘eau couler dans un tunnel ... Des voix résonnent dans ces égouts, on se croirait dans le gouffre de Munich sous l‘Isar. Ces voix racontent des fragments d‘histoires : sur des personnes disparues, la violence, la perte de mémoire ... Puis la caméra refait surface et scrute les façades de la ville, y compris celles du « Troisième Reich » . La ville est comme un corps qui serpente à travers le temps, le passé et le présent. En guise de leitmotiv, une spirale traverse les souvenirs: un escargot, un vortex, un escalier en colimaçon, les voix du passé qui se répètent à l’infini... Le film est un collage qui superpose les traces de l‘histoire et les formes de la nature, en réunissant sur un même plan des images et des sons de sources différentes.

Born in Paris, she studied art and art history in Aix-en-Provence (1995-1998), moved to Berlin in 1998 and worked for a year as an assistant for artistic projects in Küntlerhaus Bethanien. From 1999 to 2002, begins art studies at the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig and continues in early 2003 in the class of Lothar Baumgarten at the Berlin University of the Arts, where she received her postgraduate studies degree (Meisterschülerin Abschluss) in 2007. Schweizer works with different media, with a particular focus on experimental video works. She has had numerous solo exhibitions (including Westfälischer Kunstverein Münster 2010, Frankfurter Kunstverein 2011, Kunsthalle Baden-Baden 2014, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin 2016, Kunstverein Leipzig 2018, Museum Villa Stuck, Munich, 2020/21, Double Feature, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt 2021) and has shown her work in group exhibitions and at biennials (including Berlin Biennale, 2006, Centre Georges Pompidou, 2007, The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, New York, 2013, Kunsthaus Dresden, 2016, Anren Biennale 2017, China, Manifesta 13, 2020, Neuen Berliner Kunstverein e.V., Berlin 2020, Heidelberger Kunstverein, 2022, Forum expanded exhibition, Silent Green, Berlin 2022). Her videos have already been selected for numerous festivals and events, including Forum expanded during the 67th (2017) and the 72.nd (2022) Berlin International Film Festival, the Vancouver International Film Festival (2017, 2020), Gli Incontri Internazionali del Cinema, Sorrento, Italy (2019), at the 36. Kasseler Dokfest, (2019) and at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen (2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2022), where L’étoile de mer was awarded the e-flux prize in 2019. Examples of grants, and artist residencies she has received include a grant from the Villa Aurora, Los Angeles (2008), Studio grant, Karl Hofer Gesellschaft, Berlin (2008–2010), Toni and Albrecht Kumm Prize for the Promotion of Fine Arts, (2009), Artist in Residence, Lieu d’arts contemporains 3bisf, Aix-en-Provence, France (2010), Košice Artist in Residence (K.A.I.R.), Košice, Slovakia (2011), Artist in Residence, Museum POLIN, Warsaw, Poland (2016),work grant from the Berlin Senate (2019), the Funding programme for women artists in film/video, (2021), the Research Grant from the Berlin Senate as well (2017, 2021). So far, four monographs on her work have been published: Voices, Stimmen (Walther and Franz König, Köln 2121), Where Ivy Cracks The Wall (Naima, Paris / Berlin 2019), Lieux de Mémoire and Desire (Archive Books, Berlin 2015), Maya Schweizer?The Same Story Elsewhere (Spector Books, Leipzig 2010)