Bodily Encounters
Salon Suisse, 2021, Venice Architecture Biennale
May 2021 to November 2021
The Salon Suisse is part of Pro Helvetia’s Swiss contribution to the Venice Biennale. Over three weekends in autumn, it is a meeting place for artists, experts, academics, students, and visitors from all over the world. Under the title “Bodily Encounters”, the Salon Suisse 2021 explores the fundamental relationship between the body and architecture from various perspectives, focusing on three thematic areas over three weekends in September, October, and November: It opens by considering built structures as animated, autonomous organisms whose spatial gestures enter into dialogue with people. The second part focuses on how architecture creates standardised realities that determine how we live together. Finally, physical, and cognitive optimisation measures such as body hacking, reprogramming of perceptual distortions or re-skilling are tested and made fruitful for the architectural discourse. Thanks to its broad approach, the Salon Suisse engages with a variety of disciplines and themes such as psychoanalysis, transhumanism, science fiction, interior design, biology, photography, gender, housing, and migration, to name but a few.
With Mounir Ayoub, Andrea Bagnato, Ana Dana Beroš, Jos Boys, Graeme Brooker, Dora Budor, Lydia Kallipoliti, Vanessa Lacaille, Jessy Razafimandimby, Nathalie Rebholz, Joel Sanders, Davide-Christelle Sanvee, David Spurr, Irene Sunwoo, Georg Vrachliotis and Katharina Anna Wieser, among others.