Idiosynchronic
Campus Biotech, Geneva
Chem. des Mines 9, 1202 Genève, Suisse
14 November 2024 – 30 January 2025
Idiosyncrasy (def: A mode of behavior or way of thought peculiar to an individual.)
Synchronic (def: Occurring or existing at the same time or having the same period or phase.)
Dr. Elenor Morgenroth and Sean Crossley met each other in 2021 through the Arts and Sciences exchange program, a collaboration between with Embassy of Foreign Artists, Flux Laboratory and Campus Biotech and the MIP:LAB EPFL. The social and conceptual basis for Idiosynchronic developed throughout a 3-month residency, where Elenor and Sean met daily to discuss each other’s work and share perspectives without any prescribed expectations or outcomes.Considering the ‘common space’ that this residency afforded, the experience or possibility of collaboration seemed to emerge as the subject for a project in itself.
Being wary of appropriating each other’s work, our discussions gradually exposed coincidences or correlations between our respective disciplines, that we navigated with a mutual curiosity or incomprehension. These exchanges required us to regularly compare and define our vocabularies, or introduce and explain specific methods or references.
One evening, Elenor asked Sean what he thought made a good work of art. Sean said he appreciated an idiosyncratic approach to art making, to which Elenor asked what he meant by idiosyncratic? Sean explained that if art was understood as some kind of game, and an artwork proposes a new set of rules or ways to play this game, the most surprising contributions regularly come from artists that have developed an unpredictable methodology. “Where does this come from?” being the standard reaction – an anomaly.
Elenor said that she was surprised that Sean used the term, as the word Idiosyncratic has a more negative connotation in the scientific community. She explained that in science it is considered good practice to build on and reference the pool of knowledge accumulated by the scientific community. The production of idiosyncratic, ‘anomalous’ work runs a high risk of diverting and misleading the research of other scientists, essentially wasting collective time and resources.
The visual material that constitutes this project gradually developed itself following the residency, as Sean and Elenor remained in close contact and continued to work on their mutual experiments at a distance. This series of conference poster paintings brings our thinking as close together as possible without talking ‘about’ each other’s work. Neither Elenor nor Sean can discuss these works in their entirety. They are built through a negotiation of gaps and distances, or a kind of equilibrium between duplicity and fidelity. Sean feels that the works feel like the repulsion that one feels and observes when trying to push two similar magnetic poles to touch, which Elenor understands better considering most of her experiments are conducted using functional magnetic resonance imagery.
Supported by the Fédération Wallonie Bruxelles and Wallonie Bruxelles International.
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