Biography
Curator – CH
The editor of the ISSUE journal and a teacher in Visual Arts, Sylvain Menétrey is also an independent writer, publisher and curator. He co-founded the art and photography periodical Dorade (2009-2013), worked at Fri Art, Fribourg’s Art centre (2013-2016), and co-directed the Art space Forde in Geneva (2016-2018).
Contents
20.12.2022
When someone speaks to you, you just smile
Two films by Lou Cohen explore the contemporary professional world with a wry sense of humour. From recruitment agencies to start-ups, Cohen imagines situations in which coaching and power relations combine and…
20.12.2022
Automation: for or against designers?
A graphic designer and teacher who has long been interested in interactivity issues, Etienne Mineur is experimenting with artificial intelligence image generation platforms, such as DALL-E or Midjourney, to create typography. Testing…
12.12.2022
Learning about the world with painting
Interview with Nicolas Chardon
For his painting, French artist Nicolas Chardon uses excessively limited means: simple geometric forms, preferably a square; sometimes a tautological expression such as “abstract painting”; white and black as dominant colours. Yet…
08.12.2022
Crunchy packaging
Chocolate, Swiss winter relief, nightclub: external mandates in visual communication
Favarger is a Geneva-based chocolate brand founded in 1826, well known for its avelines, a chocolate praline wrapped in gold paper. In 2021, the company commissioned the Visual Communication Department of HEAD…
07.10.2022
Transition du regard
Entretien avec river, cinéaste et activiste trans
Whether working behind the camera, in casting studios, nightclubs, or on a football field, river is methodically helping trans and queer people gain visibility. For a long time, the film industry’s conservative…
06.10.2022
The curator in the courtyard with a wrench
Interview with Roxane Bovet
Autonomous activities with their own peculiar rules and devoid of any identifiable utility, play and art have regularly met and entwined throughout history, particularly in the subversive project of the Situationist International.…
14.06.2022
Text and drawing’s «confrontention»
Vanishing flower pots that herald a world in decay, the death of a tombstone cutter that leaves a great void, and a nightmarish birthday surprise in the open country. These stories, imagined…
21.01.2022
Jouer à être humain
An interview with Sylvie Boisseau, Frank Westermeyer and David Zerbib
Sylvie Boisseau, Frank Westermeyer and David Zerbib publish the ebook Jouer à être humain (Playing at being human), the result of a two-year research project (HEAD – Genève, HES-SO) which brings together…
16.12.2021
Autopsy of an editorial experiment
HEAD – Publishing's multi-platform books collection Manifestes
The HEAD – Genève’s policy is to defend access to the knowledge it produces. To this end, the HEAD launched a new multi-media editorial unit called HEAD – Publishing, whose first collection,…
24.10.2021
Principles for an open-ended artistic research
Statements by Anthony Masure and Doreen Mende
As a member of one of the signatory umbrella organizations of the Vienna Declaration on Artistic Research – the Society for Artistic Research (SAR) – the HEAD – Genève is indirectly linked…
27.09.2021
Inside the box
An interview with Morag Keil about remote art teaching and making
Through videos, immersive installations and drawings, Morag Keil looks with disillusioned humour at the impact of what Shoshana Zuboff famously called surveillance capitalism. The multiple lockdowns and calls to telecommute during the…
03.03.2021
The joy of writing and rewriting
An interview with Carla Demierre and Fabienne Radi
While remote teaching has momentarily transformed their common creative writing course into a podcast, Fabienne Radi and Carla Demierre nonetheless advocate for experiential learning: the experience of reading, writing and rewriting beyond…
28.02.2021
Une lunch box dans la fable
Review of Fabienne Radi's Le déclin du professeur de tennis by Sylvain Menétrey
Fabienne Radi published two books in 2020: Émail diamant at Art&fiction and Le déclin du professeur de tennis at Sombres torrents. Sylvain Menétrey focuses on the latter, a collection of four short…
04.02.2021
Head voices VI – Dora Garcia
A conference selected in the school's archives
This new episode in the Head voices section, which revisits notable conferences held at the HEAD – Genève in a relatively distant past, gives the floor back to the artist Dora Garcia.…
27.11.2020
Head to Head VI – Doreen Mende
Video profile of the CCC research-based programme head professor
Head to head is a series of filmed portraits of teachers, researchers, artists and designers active at the HEAD – Genève. The portraits allow them to speak about their often brilliant careers…
02.10.2020
Memories of a Grand Tour – Episode 2
An interview with Henrique Loja
We continue with our memories of the Grand Tour with Work.Master graduate student Henrique Loja’s sculpture work. Loja presented a series of objects partly composed of recycled materials, in which micro-stories and…
25.09.2020
Memories of a Grand Tour – Episode I
An interview with Giulia Essyad
On September 8th 2020, the Visual Art Department organised its traditional graduation exhibition, the Grand Tour. There’s nothing ordinary about this year’s exhibition though, which was planned for early summer, but was…
01.09.2020
La maille anticapitaliste
Interview de Valentine Ebner, responsable du projet KnitGeekResearch
Historically, the clothing industry has often been in the vanguard of great economic rationalisation movements. It was one of the first industries to be industrialised in the 19th century, and in the…
18.06.2020
Introduction – Le mémoire, une formation intellectuelle et sensible
An interview with Lysianne Léchot Hirt and Anthony Masure
Each year, the Master’s theses produced at the HEAD – Genève bear witness to great thematic, methodological and formal wealth. As mentioned by Lysianne Léchot Hirt and Anthony Masure (respectively head of…
08.06.2020
Design viral : méthodologies pour un buzz citoyen
Interview de l'artiste-chercheuse Caroline Bernard par Sylvain Menétrey
In this interview, Caroline Bernard returns to some practical experiments she conducted with colleagues for the research project “Design viral: méthodologies pour un buzz citoyen.” From an attempt at a “self heroisation,”…
28.02.2020
Guinea pigs assemblages
Réflexions de Sylvain Menétrey sur la pratique d'Eva Zornio aka Affective Evaluation
Since 2018, artist and Work.Master graduate Eva Zornio has been developing a series of participative projects under the label Affective Evaluation, where she asks the audience to consider the question of empathy.…
23.06.2019
Water policy and poetics
A conversation with Aurélien Gamboni, Jean-Pierre Greff and Daniel de Roulet
Source of life or the « armed wing » of migration policies; object of contemplation for painters and object of fears for islanders; static or furious element, deceptive metaphor for commercial exchanges…
15.05.2019
Head to head I – Charlotte Laubard
On the run up to the Venice Biennale 2019, Sylvain Menétrey sat down with Charlotte Laubard, the curator of the Biennale’s Swiss Pavillon and the head of the HEAD’s Visual Arts’ department.…