Dominique Koch at CAN centre d’art Neuchâtel

Artist: Dominique Koch

Exhibition title: Holobiont Society

Venue: CAN centre d’art Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, Switzerland

Date: November 11 – December 17, 2017

Photography: A. Satus / all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and CAN centre d’art Neuchâtel

”I think that doing theory and doing story are very strong, they are like faces at each other, it’s like foreground background (…) Not all theory is story and not all story is theory, but the contact zone between the two is really thick.” These opening statements by Donna Haraway to Dominique Koch’s new film Holobiont Society, mirror the artist’s favorite themes. She pursues an artistic research which often touches on questions of language, approached as much as code, as theoretical or narrative tool, physical materiality, sound, and nature.

In her artistic process, Dominique Koch leans primarily on a theoretical material which she augments and pushes progressively through analogous iterations. Koch creates through the editing of her films juxtapositions and combinations of discourses, images and sounds, that generate levels of senses, sensations and perceptions situated well beyond discursive elements. The installations within which Koch inserts her films allows her to prolong and complexify the creation through analogies.

Holobiont Society, Dominique Koch’s latest film, articulates around mixed interviews done separately by the artist. Koch met the American biologist and feminist Donna Haraway and the French philosopher and sociologist of Italian origin Maurizio Lazzarato. Committed to thinking about life in terms of symbiosis, Haraway weaves links of co-dependency between species, questioning the mere notion of individuality. She relies on, among other things, the holobiont concept, a term that describes the phenomenon of symbiosis, the association of different species that form one ecological unit, where one cannot live without the other. As for the philosopher Maurizio Lazzarato, he elaborates on an analysis of the current neoliberal condition with corrosive lucidity and questions the capitalist system through the multiple wars it inflicts and denies.

The creation of an engrossing audio-visual space allows the artist to lead this pragmatic program in a dystopian atmosphere which is reminiscent of a science-fiction universe. However, far from promoting the heroism of that cinematographic genre, she creates a fertile ambiguity allowing for a change of perspective, stimulating the exchanges between reality, imagination and alienation.

Dominique Koch, Holobiont Society, Film still, 2017, Vidéo 4K, son, 32 min, Courtesy Dominique Koch, in collaboration with Tobias Koch (sound design)

Dominique Koch, Holobiont Society, 2017, Film’s extract, Vidéo 4K, son, 32 min, Courtesy Dominique Koch, in collaboration with Tobias Koch (sound design)

Dominique Koch, Holobiont Society, 2017, Installation view, Vidéo 4K, son, 32 min, Courtesy Dominique Koch, in collaboration with Tobias Koch (sound design)

Dominique Koch, Perpetual Operator, 2016, Installation view, Vidéo HD, son, 19 min, Courtesy Dominique Koch

Dominique Koch, Training our mind to go visiting (Engraved glass tubes), 2017, Installation view, Holobiont Society, CAN, Courtesy Dominique Koch

Dominique Koch, Partial Sequences II (Engraved steel tubes – DNA), 2017, Installation view, Holobiont Society, CAN, Courtesy Dominique Koch

Dominique Koch, DNA Poetry reading (DNA code. Audio recording, 30min loop, in collaboration with the musician and poet Seijiro Murayama), 2017, Installation view, Holobiont Society, CAN, Courtesy Dominique Koch

Dominique Koch, Dead Immortal Jellyfish (Jellyfish : Turritopsis dohrnii, 2016), 2017, Installation view, Holobiont Society, CAN, Courtesy Dominique Koch