BPM 2024, IMAGES THAT MAKE A WORLD(S)
English translation
Discussion with Nicolas Bezard about the 6th edition of the BPM (Biennale de la photographie de Mulhouse) for NOVO
Raymond Meeks, Erasure, after nature, 2024.
Artistic director and figurehead of an event whose influence in France and abroad continues to grow, Anne Immelé talks to us here about the sixth iteration of the Biennale de la Photographie de Mulhouse, as an invitation to think and dream about Impossible Worlds.
Nicolas Bézard : The title - Impossible Worlds - is in keeping with the thematic continuity with Corps célestes (2022) and This is the end (2020).
Anne Immelé : Absolutely. Mondes Impossibles extends and deepens the subjects addressed by the biennial in the two previous editions, adding a new section to what amounts to a trilogy. The title was inspired by books that have accompanied me over the last few years, and which have fuelled the preparations for recent editions: La vie des plantes, pour une métaphysique du mélange by Emanuele Coccia, Le champignon de la fin du monde: sur la possibilité de vie dans les ruines du capitalisme by Anna Tsing, Vivre avec le trouble by Donna Haraway. These works take the point of view of the living. They speak of the urgency of changing our ways of life in the Anthropocene era, and among the many ideas developed in their pages, I particularly like the idea of connection, of human interaction with what surrounds us. For example, Emanuele Coccia notes that plants have changed the metaphysical structure of the world. According to him, it's plants that should be asked what the world is, because it's they who “make the world”. I also found this notion of impossible worlds in Jean-Christophe Bailly's concept of Umwelt, originally coined by the German biologist Jakob von Uexkül. We live within the limits of the world we can perceive. In a way, what we can't see isn't part of our universe. But in its blind propensity to industrialize, humanity has made the world unlivable for many species. Eco-anxiety is a very real phenomenon. We're in a kind of existential emergency that calls for an awareness of this world, or these worlds, that have become impossible. For, like the insect, from its restricted point of view as studied by Jakob von Uexkül, humans can only grasp the world using their own tools of perception, which are also limited. Among these tools is the eye, but there is also the augmented eye, via the camera, enabling us to push back the frontiers of our vision. So, from the apprehension of the environment by our senses to the perception of the world through photography, it's only a short step to an infinite number of impossible worlds, hence the title of this 2024 edition.
Nicolas Bézard : While the two previous editions of the Biennial focused on the mineral world, this year the emphasis is on the plant world.
Anne Immelé : Issues concerning the plant world form a sort of common thread. They can be found in the Thannois exhibitions by Terri Weifenbach and Vanessa Cowling, as well as in the exhibition at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Mulhouse. I would add that these questions are set against the backdrop of an emerging post-industrial civilization. This awareness that we are now living in the ruins of capitalism will be active in many of the photographic works on show. This is one of the main thrusts of the group exhibition PEP (Photographic Exploration Project), initiated by Bénédicte Blondeau. The exhibition, which was the subject of an international open call, focuses on all the themes raised by this year's BPM, notably the question of extractivist capitalism raised by German photographer Felix Lampe. Lampe asked himself about the future of coal mining in his country. In a similar vein, Swiss photographer Lisa Mazenauer worked from archives left by her grandfather, who was involved in a gold mining project in Zaire, while Maximiliano Tineo photographed a silver mine in Bolivia. These proposals draw on the documentary approach or the use of archives to address a cross-cutting issue in our festival. This is also reflected in the exhibition conceived by guest curator Sonia Voss, which, alongside Léa Habourdin, will feature Lithuanian photographer Andrej Polukord, whose work focuses on the exploitation of forests in his country, as well as in Sweden.
Nicolas Bézard : This edition questions the way we look at nature, the way we recharge our batteries, but also the way we exploit and therefore threaten it. What is the specificity of photography when it comes to these subjects ?
Anne Immelé : It's multifaceted. In particular, photography can be used as an instrument to deepen our knowledge of living things. On the contrary, it can be used to glorify industry, as in the images of the German photographer Paul Wolff, born in Mulhouse at the end of the 19th century, whose career is retraced by Michaël Guggenbuhl in an exhibition at the Grand'Rue library, in connection with the question of the edited image. In the exhibition those eyes - these eyes - they fade presented at the Musée des Beaux-Arts, photography is used in a markedly different way, in a kind of questioning of photographic objectivity. Instead of using it as a means of clarifying things, or giving the illusion that through it we might know them better, photography will instead obscure them, cast doubt on them, and I particularly like this way of questioning the use of the medium itself.
Nicolas Bézard : Speaking of doubts about the use of the photographic medium, over the past two years we've seen an increasingly massive use of artificial intelligence in the image-making process. As an artist, teacher and artistic director of a photo festival, how do you perceive this trend ? Did you want to integrate it into the programming, given that AIs generate confusion between reality and fiction, what is possible and what is impossible ?
Anne Immelé : In my opinion, this shift between the real world and a fictional dimension has been present for a very long time with the so-called classical use of photography. I even think that this question of the veracity of photography has existed since the invention of photography itself. Even silver-based photography in its most minimalist form, with a simple camera body and a lens that doesn't distort human vision, makes it possible to create highly ambiguous images, already carrying a charge of strangeness and the imaginary. It's obvious that the more technological tools we have at our disposal, the more we increase tenfold the possibilities for blurring the line between reality and fiction. As far as artificial intelligence is concerned, I prefer to keep a certain amount of restraint, because of the fad that this novelty creates. AI can undoubtedly produce interesting images, but I'd say it all depends on the context in which it's used. In this respect, there's a rather decisive photograph to be shown in the PEP exhibition, generated with the help of an AI, and which brings us into contact with a future time where the organic is hybridized with the machine. Nevertheless, what counted for us in the choice of this image was not the fact that it was created using an algorithm, but rather what it said, what it told of a possible state of our world, where on the one hand technology tends to cut us off from our biological origins, and where on the other we couldn't exist if other living organisms didn't wither away. All this challenges our outlook, our conceptions of the present and our projections into the future.
Nicolas Bézard : The title - Impossible Worlds - is in keeping with the thematic continuity with Corps célestes (2022) and This is the end (2020).
Anne Immelé : Absolutely. Mondes Impossibles extends and deepens the subjects addressed by the biennial in the two previous editions, adding a new section to what amounts to a trilogy. The title was inspired by books that have accompanied me over the last few years, and which have fuelled the preparations for recent editions: La vie des plantes, pour une métaphysique du mélange by Emanuele Coccia, Le champignon de la fin du monde: sur la possibilité de vie dans les ruines du capitalisme by Anna Tsing, Vivre avec le trouble by Donna Haraway. These works take the point of view of the living. They speak of the urgency of changing our ways of life in the Anthropocene era, and among the many ideas developed in their pages, I particularly like the idea of connection, of human interaction with what surrounds us. For example, Emanuele Coccia notes that plants have changed the metaphysical structure of the world. According to him, it's plants that should be asked what the world is, because it's they who “make the world”. I also found this notion of impossible worlds in Jean-Christophe Bailly's concept of Umwelt, originally coined by the German biologist Jakob von Uexkül. We live within the limits of the world we can perceive. In a way, what we can't see isn't part of our universe. But in its blind propensity to industrialize, humanity has made the world unlivable for many species. Eco-anxiety is a very real phenomenon. We're in a kind of existential emergency that calls for an awareness of this world, or these worlds, that have become impossible. For, like the insect, from its restricted point of view as studied by Jakob von Uexkül, humans can only grasp the world using their own tools of perception, which are also limited. Among these tools is the eye, but there is also the augmented eye, via the camera, enabling us to push back the frontiers of our vision. So, from the apprehension of the environment by our senses to the perception of the world through photography, it's only a short step to an infinite number of impossible worlds, hence the title of this 2024 edition.
Nicolas Bézard : While the two previous editions of the Biennial focused on the mineral world, this year the emphasis is on the plant world.
Anne Immelé : Issues concerning the plant world form a sort of common thread. They can be found in the Thannois exhibitions by Terri Weifenbach and Vanessa Cowling, as well as in the exhibition at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Mulhouse. I would add that these questions are set against the backdrop of an emerging post-industrial civilization. This awareness that we are now living in the ruins of capitalism will be active in many of the photographic works on show. This is one of the main thrusts of the group exhibition PEP (Photographic Exploration Project), initiated by Bénédicte Blondeau. The exhibition, which was the subject of an international open call, focuses on all the themes raised by this year's BPM, notably the question of extractivist capitalism raised by German photographer Felix Lampe. Lampe asked himself about the future of coal mining in his country. In a similar vein, Swiss photographer Lisa Mazenauer worked from archives left by her grandfather, who was involved in a gold mining project in Zaire, while Maximiliano Tineo photographed a silver mine in Bolivia. These proposals draw on the documentary approach or the use of archives to address a cross-cutting issue in our festival. This is also reflected in the exhibition conceived by guest curator Sonia Voss, which, alongside Léa Habourdin, will feature Lithuanian photographer Andrej Polukord, whose work focuses on the exploitation of forests in his country, as well as in Sweden.
Nicolas Bézard : This edition questions the way we look at nature, the way we recharge our batteries, but also the way we exploit and therefore threaten it. What is the specificity of photography when it comes to these subjects ?
Anne Immelé : It's multifaceted. In particular, photography can be used as an instrument to deepen our knowledge of living things. On the contrary, it can be used to glorify industry, as in the images of the German photographer Paul Wolff, born in Mulhouse at the end of the 19th century, whose career is retraced by Michaël Guggenbuhl in an exhibition at the Grand'Rue library, in connection with the question of the edited image. In the exhibition those eyes - these eyes - they fade presented at the Musée des Beaux-Arts, photography is used in a markedly different way, in a kind of questioning of photographic objectivity. Instead of using it as a means of clarifying things, or giving the illusion that through it we might know them better, photography will instead obscure them, cast doubt on them, and I particularly like this way of questioning the use of the medium itself.
Nicolas Bézard : Speaking of doubts about the use of the photographic medium, over the past two years we've seen an increasingly massive use of artificial intelligence in the image-making process. As an artist, teacher and artistic director of a photo festival, how do you perceive this trend ? Did you want to integrate it into the programming, given that AIs generate confusion between reality and fiction, what is possible and what is impossible ?
Anne Immelé : In my opinion, this shift between the real world and a fictional dimension has been present for a very long time with the so-called classical use of photography. I even think that this question of the veracity of photography has existed since the invention of photography itself. Even silver-based photography in its most minimalist form, with a simple camera body and a lens that doesn't distort human vision, makes it possible to create highly ambiguous images, already carrying a charge of strangeness and the imaginary. It's obvious that the more technological tools we have at our disposal, the more we increase tenfold the possibilities for blurring the line between reality and fiction. As far as artificial intelligence is concerned, I prefer to keep a certain amount of restraint, because of the fad that this novelty creates. AI can undoubtedly produce interesting images, but I'd say it all depends on the context in which it's used. In this respect, there's a rather decisive photograph to be shown in the PEP exhibition, generated with the help of an AI, and which brings us into contact with a future time where the organic is hybridized with the machine. Nevertheless, what counted for us in the choice of this image was not the fact that it was created using an algorithm, but rather what it said, what it told of a possible state of our world, where on the one hand technology tends to cut us off from our biological origins, and where on the other we couldn't exist if other living organisms didn't wither away. All this challenges our outlook, our conceptions of the present and our projections into the future.
Nicolas Bézard : You curated the group show at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Mulhouse. Alongside photographers exhibiting for the first time as part of the biennial, we find artists who have a special history with the festival, such as Bénédicte Blondeau, Bernard Plossu and Raymond Meeks.
Anne Immelé : As a photographic biennial, we asked ourselves what made us special. Why do we set up this festival? What's so special about it? I believe that one of the answers is to say that we bring here practices linked to poetic ways of inhabiting the world, while remaining sensitive to a constant renewal of artists, curators and sensibilities. Our aim is not to remain in a vacuum, with always the same interlocutors within a watertight community. Nevertheless, we are committed to defending an idea of photography that does not seek spectacular effects at all costs, but rather integrates notions of discretion, fragility and contingency into its modus operandi. The work of Bernard Plossu, featured in the biennial since 2012 and one aspect of which will be highlighted again this year at the Musée, is emblematic of this. Nor could the biennial exist without the artistic and cultural community that supports it throughout the city of Mulhouse. The festival is made possible by these local energies, and I'm thinking of the Médiapop publishing house, which has been with us from the start, as well as all the partner venues that follow us to each new edition. These multiple loyalties are also part of who we are.
Nicolas Bézard : So there's the idea of creating an emulation, a dialogue between people who share the same high standards in their sometimes distant visions of photography.
Anne Immelé : Indeed, we have a duty to be a place where artists meet the public, but also other photographers, whatever their nationality, their approach or their use of the medium. Many of them got to know each other through the biennial, and continue to talk to each other today. We are part of a continuity with authors who regularly return to exhibit or design exhibitions with us, such as Pascal Amoyel, Thomas Boivin and Olivier Kervern. They won't be present this year, but I continue to be close to their way of using silver photography. In this same community of spirit and gesture, you mentioned the American photographer Raymond Meeks, who was already present at the 2020 edition, and who in those eyes will be showing images produced in his camera in the Californian desert. His work is unprecedented, radical and minimalist, designed to show a kind of state of things. A poetics that is at once dry, subtractive and lyrical, in line with some of the work we've championed in the past.
Nicolas Bézard : In view of this very strong vision, it seems to me that the BPM is keen to invest all fields of photography, including more installation or conceptual approaches.
Anne Immelé : The biennial has always been open to fine art photography. This year, we are presenting the work of Argentinian photographer Ingrid Weyland in Hombourg, in the public space. Her photography is linked to issues of painting, materiality and mise en abyme, and in its own way questions our connection to nature. In this spirit of openness, Steve Bisson offers Thann a double program of women photographers who question representations of the plant world, one of whom, Vanessa Crowling, works on the installation dimension you mentioned. The idea is to give the public an opportunity to gain perspective on current aesthetic, ecological and societal issues. And the PEP exhibition, which will be held in a new venue for us in Mulhouse, symbolic in many ways - the Tour de l'Europe - crystallizes this, as it blends the intimate content of certain proposals with other approaches, other directions - documentary, historical, hybrid, etc.
Anne Immelé : As a photographic biennial, we asked ourselves what made us special. Why do we set up this festival? What's so special about it? I believe that one of the answers is to say that we bring here practices linked to poetic ways of inhabiting the world, while remaining sensitive to a constant renewal of artists, curators and sensibilities. Our aim is not to remain in a vacuum, with always the same interlocutors within a watertight community. Nevertheless, we are committed to defending an idea of photography that does not seek spectacular effects at all costs, but rather integrates notions of discretion, fragility and contingency into its modus operandi. The work of Bernard Plossu, featured in the biennial since 2012 and one aspect of which will be highlighted again this year at the Musée, is emblematic of this. Nor could the biennial exist without the artistic and cultural community that supports it throughout the city of Mulhouse. The festival is made possible by these local energies, and I'm thinking of the Médiapop publishing house, which has been with us from the start, as well as all the partner venues that follow us to each new edition. These multiple loyalties are also part of who we are.
Nicolas Bézard : So there's the idea of creating an emulation, a dialogue between people who share the same high standards in their sometimes distant visions of photography.
Anne Immelé : Indeed, we have a duty to be a place where artists meet the public, but also other photographers, whatever their nationality, their approach or their use of the medium. Many of them got to know each other through the biennial, and continue to talk to each other today. We are part of a continuity with authors who regularly return to exhibit or design exhibitions with us, such as Pascal Amoyel, Thomas Boivin and Olivier Kervern. They won't be present this year, but I continue to be close to their way of using silver photography. In this same community of spirit and gesture, you mentioned the American photographer Raymond Meeks, who was already present at the 2020 edition, and who in those eyes will be showing images produced in his camera in the Californian desert. His work is unprecedented, radical and minimalist, designed to show a kind of state of things. A poetics that is at once dry, subtractive and lyrical, in line with some of the work we've championed in the past.
Nicolas Bézard : In view of this very strong vision, it seems to me that the BPM is keen to invest all fields of photography, including more installation or conceptual approaches.
Anne Immelé : The biennial has always been open to fine art photography. This year, we are presenting the work of Argentinian photographer Ingrid Weyland in Hombourg, in the public space. Her photography is linked to issues of painting, materiality and mise en abyme, and in its own way questions our connection to nature. In this spirit of openness, Steve Bisson offers Thann a double program of women photographers who question representations of the plant world, one of whom, Vanessa Crowling, works on the installation dimension you mentioned. The idea is to give the public an opportunity to gain perspective on current aesthetic, ecological and societal issues. And the PEP exhibition, which will be held in a new venue for us in Mulhouse, symbolic in many ways - the Tour de l'Europe - crystallizes this, as it blends the intimate content of certain proposals with other approaches, other directions - documentary, historical, hybrid, etc.
Nicolas Bézard : Another distinctive feature of the Biennial is its focus on places and their reinvestment by and for photography. Every time, I get the impression that there's a real desire to question the space in terms of what we're going to show there, to transform the place into another possible place.
Anne Immelé : As you so rightly said, each exhibition is conceived by and for the place that hosts it. In Thann, Vanessa Cowling's Fixing the Shadows transforms the perception of the town hall space into a perceptive experience, with a hanging garden inside composed of hundreds of phytograms, lumen-prints and original anthotypes. The artist also imagined a translucent installation on the building's windows. The sky over South Africa - his country of origin - can be seen in a work that plays on luminous variations according to the light outside. For Clouds Physics, exhibited along the Rangen, Terri Weifenbach's photographs were specifically chosen to resonate with the surrounding river, trees and vines. In this way, our guest curators began a long process of reflection on the exhibition in relation to its environment. Steve Bisson, for example, visited Thann several times to get to know the site. He also visited the town's historical museum to understand its origins and evolution, before selecting the two photographers. This time was used to imagine various ways of intervening in these spaces, before finding the artists and works that would best fit in. This shows the importance of this programming work, the complexity of which the public is often unaware.
Nicolas Bézard : The festival traditionally took place in the summer, overlapping with Les Rencontres d'Arles. It now consists of a prelude beginning in June in Thann, followed by a major act starting in September. Why the change of calendar ?
Anne Immelé : There are several reasons. This new positioning at the start of the autumn allows us to take advantage of the energy that is always present at this time of year. We tried it out a little reluctantly in 2020, in the context of the pandemic, and it was a positive experience. September also enables us to attract more school visitors, an educational dimension that was somewhat lost when we started in mid-June. While the majority of exhibitions are held in and around Mulhouse, we've kept the idea of an initial phase in Thann from June onwards, with the fine offerings of Vanessa Cowling and Terri Weifenbach. This is the first highlight, giving a foretaste of the entire festival. Given the presence of outdoor photographic trails on the banks of the Thur, we felt it was important to keep it in summer. New this year are the partnerships we have forged with other photography festivals, in Switzerland with the Journées photographiques de Bienne and Alt + 1000, and in France with the city of Montpellier and the Pavillon Populaire, which has entrusted us with the prints for the Paul Wolff exhibition. We also work closely with PEP and the Malta Biennial of Contemporary Art, whose first edition is taking shape this year.
Nicolas Bézard : The link with Malta is manifold, since those eyes is an extension of an exhibition you initiated on the island in 2022, in another form, but with the same artists. Malta is also at the heart of your most recent photographic work, as a telluric landscape, a space of metaphysical projection, the cradle of an ancient history, and of course, due to its central position in the Mediterranean, the scene of a tragedy, that of migrants. These people risk their lives in the hope of a better life, of possible happiness, after leaving a world that has become “ impossible”. Is this echoed in this year's program ?
Anne Immelé : Not in a direct way, I'd say, but it's a question that's obviously close to my heart, an essential social issue. If it isn't addressed this year, it will certainly be in the future of our event.
Nicolas Bézard : Since we're talking about looking to the future, how do you see the BPM evolving over the next few years ?
Anne Immelé : My first wish would be to confirm the festival's international dimension by developing residencies open to foreign photographers. I'd also like to move towards more mediation through workshops and workshops to raise public awareness of photography. Finally, another wish would be to have more exhibitions outside the borders of Mulhouse, or even France, via a system of exchanges and loans with partner institutions or events. This is conceivable on condition that we produce exhibitions ourselves, as we did for the Matthew Genitempo exhibition in 2022, a series presented at the Journées Photographiques de Bienne in May of this year. The BPM is an event that is resolutely open to the world, and we work to ensure that its creations, its leading artists, can travel and spread the singular spirit, which has been happening every two years here in Mulhouse, for over a decade.
BPM 2024, IMPOSSIBLE WORLDS
biennial from September 13 to October 13
in Mulhouse, Thann, Hombourg and Fribourg
www.biennale-photo-mulhouse.com
Anne Immelé : As you so rightly said, each exhibition is conceived by and for the place that hosts it. In Thann, Vanessa Cowling's Fixing the Shadows transforms the perception of the town hall space into a perceptive experience, with a hanging garden inside composed of hundreds of phytograms, lumen-prints and original anthotypes. The artist also imagined a translucent installation on the building's windows. The sky over South Africa - his country of origin - can be seen in a work that plays on luminous variations according to the light outside. For Clouds Physics, exhibited along the Rangen, Terri Weifenbach's photographs were specifically chosen to resonate with the surrounding river, trees and vines. In this way, our guest curators began a long process of reflection on the exhibition in relation to its environment. Steve Bisson, for example, visited Thann several times to get to know the site. He also visited the town's historical museum to understand its origins and evolution, before selecting the two photographers. This time was used to imagine various ways of intervening in these spaces, before finding the artists and works that would best fit in. This shows the importance of this programming work, the complexity of which the public is often unaware.
Nicolas Bézard : The festival traditionally took place in the summer, overlapping with Les Rencontres d'Arles. It now consists of a prelude beginning in June in Thann, followed by a major act starting in September. Why the change of calendar ?
Anne Immelé : There are several reasons. This new positioning at the start of the autumn allows us to take advantage of the energy that is always present at this time of year. We tried it out a little reluctantly in 2020, in the context of the pandemic, and it was a positive experience. September also enables us to attract more school visitors, an educational dimension that was somewhat lost when we started in mid-June. While the majority of exhibitions are held in and around Mulhouse, we've kept the idea of an initial phase in Thann from June onwards, with the fine offerings of Vanessa Cowling and Terri Weifenbach. This is the first highlight, giving a foretaste of the entire festival. Given the presence of outdoor photographic trails on the banks of the Thur, we felt it was important to keep it in summer. New this year are the partnerships we have forged with other photography festivals, in Switzerland with the Journées photographiques de Bienne and Alt + 1000, and in France with the city of Montpellier and the Pavillon Populaire, which has entrusted us with the prints for the Paul Wolff exhibition. We also work closely with PEP and the Malta Biennial of Contemporary Art, whose first edition is taking shape this year.
Nicolas Bézard : The link with Malta is manifold, since those eyes is an extension of an exhibition you initiated on the island in 2022, in another form, but with the same artists. Malta is also at the heart of your most recent photographic work, as a telluric landscape, a space of metaphysical projection, the cradle of an ancient history, and of course, due to its central position in the Mediterranean, the scene of a tragedy, that of migrants. These people risk their lives in the hope of a better life, of possible happiness, after leaving a world that has become “ impossible”. Is this echoed in this year's program ?
Anne Immelé : Not in a direct way, I'd say, but it's a question that's obviously close to my heart, an essential social issue. If it isn't addressed this year, it will certainly be in the future of our event.
Nicolas Bézard : Since we're talking about looking to the future, how do you see the BPM evolving over the next few years ?
Anne Immelé : My first wish would be to confirm the festival's international dimension by developing residencies open to foreign photographers. I'd also like to move towards more mediation through workshops and workshops to raise public awareness of photography. Finally, another wish would be to have more exhibitions outside the borders of Mulhouse, or even France, via a system of exchanges and loans with partner institutions or events. This is conceivable on condition that we produce exhibitions ourselves, as we did for the Matthew Genitempo exhibition in 2022, a series presented at the Journées Photographiques de Bienne in May of this year. The BPM is an event that is resolutely open to the world, and we work to ensure that its creations, its leading artists, can travel and spread the singular spirit, which has been happening every two years here in Mulhouse, for over a decade.
BPM 2024, IMPOSSIBLE WORLDS
biennial from September 13 to October 13
in Mulhouse, Thann, Hombourg and Fribourg
www.biennale-photo-mulhouse.com