What happens when curation resists any form of guidance? For Rebecca Salvadori, one of the curators of Norient Festival, this led to a silent rush of creativity. A claim for positive disorientation.

Action must have a beginning, a middle and an end: observations under pressure.

I am interested in people, how they react, how they behave, their emotions, feelings, situations. Video allowed me to stay and capture the right moment, intense moments where something is happening. (Jonas Mekas 2012, 02:40–03:04)

When the intensity is there. It's the intensity that chooses its medium. (Harald Szeemann quoted in Llorca 1998, 08.00–08:16)

The student comes to the teacher and begs him for instruction. The teacher says nothing; he is just sweeping up leaves. The student goes into another part of the forest and builds his own house, and when he’s finally educated, what does he do? He doesn’t thank himself; he goes back to the teacher who said nothing and thanks him. It is this spirit of not teaching that has been completely lost in our educational system, says John Cage. (Daniel Birnbaum 2009, 231)

Reflecting on one’s capacity to generate an internal creative structure reminds me of the masters I have encountered in different ways and at different stages of my life. These encounters occurred in many unexpected ways: while picking up a book from the living room table back at home and reading a few scattered sentences, or via the experiences and attitudes I build while connecting with my surroundings.

Hans-Joachim Müller’s Exhibition Maker, a text on Harald Szeemann’s emphatic curatorial methods, provided one such encounter. Szeemann was only 28 when he was appointed director of the Kunsthalle Bern, curating exhibitions that he called «poems spaces», which took – in his own words – a «controlled chaos» approach to curatorship. Visualizing an exhibition made of «attitudes» rather than artworks, and a focus on the process rather than the output, reconnected me with a broader tradition.

1. Beginning: Silent Reflections

While thinking about curatorship, I felt strongly drawn to this tradition and knew that I needed to keep it in mind. As soon as possible, I walked down the streets of Bern and into the Kunsthalle to see what it felt like to be there. When I was 18 I participated in a three-month artist residency curated by my father Remo Salvadori. His approach had an impact on me: he invited the 21 participating artists to focus on three dimensions of living, which are directed towards oneself, towards others, and towards the project. When I was 22, Pier Luigi Tazzi, a curator, teacher, art critic, writer, and friend, invited me to take part in a group exhibition, rites de passage, in the Netherlands. I was one of the youngest in the group. He didn’t help me to understand how I was supposed to participate in the show; he didn’t guide me or offer any form of conversation about the work I was supposed to present. I felt disoriented and alone.

In this process, I developed my own silent reflections. Filming other artists installing their works, wandering around the city of Heerlen, and questioning the value of my practice, I finally came to the decision to install a video piece in a small television hidden in the library of the art center. During the press conference Pier Luigi invited me to stand up and share the transformative process I had undergone through being left alone. The entire experience was meant to be a real Rite de Passage for me. And it definitely was.

I feel embraced by these attitudes, like a fragrance in a room. I feel guided by a collection of varied interconnected experiences. I have interpreted «something personal in the hands», which was the thematic backbone of the Norient Film Festival 2022, as referring to the desire to consider individually lived experiences.

2. Middle: Video Essay «Im Fluss»

This is a film portrait of a moment with Bernese musicians Ruth and Res Margot, after I discovered the importance of the Swiss river Aare.

Thomas B. Translates Res Margot

Res Margot constructs his own instruments, like this flute. He says that he learns from the «turbulence» of the water, and that air also has a similar «turbulence». As the flute is made of wood, it constantly reacts to the weather and changes everyday. Sometimes this turbulence is there, sometimes it is not. For Res, the art of music is to control these turbulences, to find ways to play with them. The lower you are underwater, the higher the pressure gets. According to the social reformer and writer Rudolf Steiner, deep underwater, there is light. If you make music or swim in the river Aare, you might experience states that are beyond rational explanation.

3. End: The Making of the NFF 2022 Program

To me, «something personal in the hands», the thematic backbone of NFF 2022, refers to the desire to consider a constellation of elements while investigating the constantly evolving connections between moving image, sound, and live performance: elements such as individuality, lived experiences, and relations created over time. The motivating force in making this program was the act of self-observation as a way to better understand oneself as a subject and author. The fragmentation of the visual experience and the tradition of portraiture are some of the reflections surrounding my film projects and research. Mark Fell, Sandro Mussida, Leah Walker, Jack Dove, and Rian Treanor, as well as FOLD’s club team, Giant Swan, and Sculpture are, in fact, all part of a long-lasting fabric of relations. The program presents an array of U.K. artists in dialog with a selection of Swiss artists, such as Res and Ruth Margot and drummer and percussionist Julian Sartorius.

«Environments at the edge of forever» is a program consisting of site-specific interventions, such as Sandro Mussida’s participatory installation; Mark Fell’s durational event, part performance, part workshop; and Jack Dove’s pyrotechnic performance of unpredictable bright flashes. The program brings to our attention the role of the audience as an active contributor to the work, challenging the perception of time and space. The club night «Golden Triangle», as well as the talk «Representing & Representation, a Conversation about Club Culture», draw on my relationship with electronic music and the communities which ritually congregate around it. «Like a River Flow / Wie ein Flusslauf» reflects on how specific environments might affect our creative practices, as well as the desire to build a connection with the local music scene.