«Cha's no guetcho mit üsere Ärde? Wahrschynlech nid, aber hoffentlech scho.»*

Probably Not, Hopefully So presents a public river burial for butterflies, led by a professional grief companion. The community mourns, commemorates, and bears witness to life that is made precarious and not considered grievable.

A butterfly case is then opened: those present release the dead butterflies into the flowing water. The specimens are at once concrete document and symbol: preserved remains of Swiss species that are severely endangered or already extinct.

The work gives "Environmental Grief" a ritual framework: the ongoing disappearance of the more-than-human world is not merely addressed, but collectively acknowledged and experienced.

*1 Swiss German: "Can things still turn out alright for our earth? Probably not, but hopefully so."

A new dictionary is needed with precise definitions: "thief" as "a kind of kleptomaniac of the lower classes" and "kleptomaniac" as "a kind of thief of polite society," wrote the Parisian newspaper L'Œuvre ironically in 1925.*1

In the 19th century, "kleptomania" was established as a medical diagnosis and attributed primarily to bourgeois women. It could mitigate court sentences, while theft among the lower classes was harshly punished.*2

The video Le Bon Marché traces the historical connections between the emergence of the concept of kleptomania, the consumer culture of the 19th century, and the prevailing notions of femininity at the time. Le Bon Marché is considered the first department store in history, founded in Paris in 1838, and is also the filming location of the eponymous video.

The video features female protagonists in the present-day spaces of the department store. A voice-over lists everyday errands, their language and content drawing on the 19th century. Beginning with a shopping list, the enumeration gradually condenses into social expectations and moral justifications.

The work was created during a residency at the Cité internationale des Arts in Paris.

1 Source from the book: When Ladies Go A-Thieving: Middle-Class Shoplifters in the Victorian Department Store by Elaine S. Abelson 
2 Source from the book: Shoplifting: A Social History by Kerry Segrave

How can normative behavioral patterns be consciously performed? Can so-called “marginalized groups” imitate the dominant society in order to move subversively within its structures? Can rightful claims to dignity and rights be appropriated through a performed inconspicuousness?

Green hands perform various gestures of appropriation, accompanied by stage-direction-like self-talk that runs through the video:

Act as if your sense of self weren’t in your way.
Act as if you had a right to work.
Act as if you deserved what you receive.

The sound oscillates between external noises (supermarket, street, and public space) and internal sounds (heartbeat and breathing).

The piece aims to prompt viewers to question their own stance and position in society.

The title Videur (French for “bouncer”) plays on its similarity to the word vide (French for “empty”).

The images of key blanks with unengraved bits allude to and challenge the potentials and symbolisms of keys.

A key serves to secure and protect, separating what is mine from what is yours. It locks large city gates just as easily as small diaries. Keys do more than open doors; they introduce new dimensions of power and rule, magic and knowledge.
When considered on its own, the key, unlike the lock, also has symbolic significance—for instance, during a house handover, a shop opening, or the public surrender of a city. Many other types of keys carry their own symbolic meaning, from a widower’s key to a coffin key, or jewelry in the shape of a key. Anyone who possesses a key, after all, can access whatever it secures.

Encountering a silver key blank leaves only the contem- plation of a key’s meaning.

The starting point for the text «Vermögensumverteilung» (Law on the redistribution of property) is the tradition of a legal law that supposedly legalized the theft of other people's property in ancient Egypt. According to legend, the legal law regulated the practice of misappropriation.

Together with the lawyer Cora Schmid, I have expanded the tradition around this ancient Egyptian law and translated it into the language of today's Swiss Penal Code.

The text work is based on the fictitious adoption of a freely imagined popular initiative «for a law on the independent redistribution of wealth». The questions, on which ethnic background our laws are based, and what the legalization of misappropriation would mean for our society remain at the center of this piece.

thanks to: Jessica Jurassica, Melanie Aebli, Tarek Naguib, Demian Hübscher

The video essay «Office for Economy and Labor» portrays the everyday work of an employee of said office. After the fictitious acceptance of the freely invented popular initiative «for a law on the independent redistribution of wealth», the employee at the counter is busy with the implementation of the new law. She is responsible for the deposit, handover and liquidation of the property handed over and checks whether the conditions for independent property redistribution have been fulfilled.

The imagined legal situation surrounding the legalization of the dispossession of property shows a defamiliarization of Swiss bureaucracy that humorously criticizes the institutionalization of ethics.

office stuff: Maia Gusberti, Roger Fähndrich
customers: Alfred Fankhauser, Eva De Souza, Giorgia Piffaretti, Kris Schneeberger, Mbene Mwambene, Tamara Milošević, Vanja Ivana Jelić
hand model: Loris Aregger
director: Nicolle Bussien
camera: Alain Guillebeau
audio: Giorgia Piffaretti
editing: Nicolle Bussien, Giorgia Piffaretti
scene: Nicolle Bussien, Giorgia Piffaretti
consulting: Giorgia Piffaretti
catering: Youness
thanks to: Amnesty International, Marianne Naeff, Fundbüro der Stadt Bern

Stamps open doors. Not only on public documents, but also on wrists, stamps are used as keys to «grant» access and a sense of belonging to certain groups.

In the fictional video essay, «Act privileged!» the protagonists duplicate the entrance stamp of a nightclub with the help of markers and tape. Thus gaining self-determined access to nightlife without the risk of being excluded due to their appearance or the stamps in their passports.

The artist, Nicolle Bussien, explores the boundaries between self-empowerment and criminality, questioning the options for people who are labelled by the Swiss dominant society as «not belonging» for taking action. Because stamps not only open doors - but also close them.

Text by Alice Britschgi

together with: Titilayo Adebayo, Izabel Barros, Mardoché Kabengele, Mbene Mwambene, Timo Righetti, Anelis Kaiser Trujillo
production: Nicolle Bussien
camera: Alain Guillebeau
sound recording: Carole
postproduction: Nicolle Bussien
subtitle: Rachele Piffaretti
catering: Medina
thanks to: Yoftahe Efrem, Mohamed Hassan, Mayo Irion, Vanja Ivana Jelić, Mardoché Kabengele, Giorgia Piffaretti, Malana Rogers-Bursen, Schlachthaus Theater Bern
support: Burgergemeinde Bern, Grand Palais, Kultur Stadt Bern, Monsol Foundation, SoKultur, Steigi (filming location), Swisslos - Kultur Kanton Bern

«Réviser les lignes» (Eng: Revise the lines) is a two-channel video essay that poetically (de)constructs the marking and the boundary lines of soccer fields. The gesture of drawing lines is accompanied by a voice-over narration of a childhood memory. In the playground, we played: Swiss against foreigners.

Standard white lines evoke metaphorical separation and demarcation to be crossed by alternative lines. The work challenges categorical thinking in We and the Others.

«Réviser les lignes» is a reaction to the political debates around migration and belonging that are regularly carried out in the context of the post-migrant Swiss national football team.

direction/camera/production: Nicolle Bussien
cooperation concept: Mohamed Hassen, Giorgia Piffaretti
script: Nicolle Bussien, Mohamed Hassen
voice-over: Mohamed Hassen, Giorgia Piffaretti
postproduction: Nicolle Bussien, Giorgia Piffaretti
assistance: Puy Navarro, Nanuchka Zari
support: aaag architects, commune de Sierre, Fondation de Château Mercier, Kanton Solothurn Kuratorium für Kulturföderung

The classic photo studio for job applications becomes a polyphonic space in which the question of social norms and the difficulty of satisfying them is raised between flashing studio lights. Voices of job seekers critically question the face as a medium of truth and the photograph as an image of reality, while at the same time pointing out the structural discrimination in job seeking.

Friendly, sympathetic, dynamic, innovative, experienced and normal. The perfect application photo combines all of these attributes in one picture. The smiling application photo is a peculiarity of Switzerland.

But what is not peculiar is the high social value of work and at the same time the increasingly precarious working conditions. The work «Lights On» explores the impossibility of corresponding to a normalized picture.

 

speakers: Mohamed Hassan, Mbene Mwambene, Giorgia Piffaretti, Astrid Nigg
sound design: Timon Kurz
thanks to the anonymous interview partners