Arts at CERN

Anne Sylvie Henchoz is an artist and performer, and Julie Lang, is a researcher in the intersection of sociology and art history

With a polymorphic practice that includes action, construction and narrative, Anne Sylvie Henchoz stages situations conceived as ceremonies, inventing a vocabulary that is at once poetic, physical and choreographic in order to speak about a possible relation between people. Creating sensual, focal and expansive encounters, she looks at her practice through a prism of language, embodying ‘film-like spaces’, expanded cinema, performance and editions. Most influential references come from postmodern dance, life’s experiences, gender and cultural studies, and biographies. Work draws upon a plasticity of interactions, close to the ‘Poetics of relation’ of Edouard Glissant. Treasuring idea of ‘fluid identity’, to question commonplace ideas about identity, projects are shaped by the desire to experience profound states of reality with others.

Julie Lang’s research focuses on the art world of the seventies, more precisely around the concept of information and cybernetics in relation to the new aesthetics and exhibition forms. Added to this, her experience as a curator and collaborator on artistic projects have contributed to her thoughts. This allows her to develop a personal approach to creating experimental platforms to question the idea of knowledge production.

Between 2018 and 2019, Anne Sylvie Henchoz and Julie Lang completed a residency at CERN supported by the Republic and Canton of Geneva and the City of Geneva.