Artists in Residence

Alina Arshi obtained her BA in Contemporary Dance from La Manufacture in Lausanne, where she is now based. Her questions currently orbit around feelings of solitude in profiles with complex statuses, such as within the family unit, and geographies. Her BA project examined the social and class architecture surrounding second-order immigrants, specifically relatives of migrant workers in host countries. «Entepfuhl» was presented at the 2023 edition of Les Urbaines and is currently on tour. 

Alina Arshi's residency takes place in cooperation with Théâtre Arsenic in Lausanne. The residency is supported by the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia.

Petra Serhal is a multidisciplinary artist and performer creating multisensorial installation performances and choreographies. Her work draws from her ongoing research on the experiential aspect of performance and on the role of the audience and their bodies in the performative and choreographed experience.

Her work often deals with language, sound and scent in relation to movement and space while seeing the body as an archive, and addressing notions of fragmentation, and absence.

As an artist born and living in Lebanon, the body - its history, its quotidian, and its movement - has been the focus of her research. Thus, she has been experimenting with choreography through research and live performances. Her work ranged from researching the history of political assassinations to the economic history in Lebanon and its collapse in 2020, and how such events affect the body movement. Her research also led her to explore the political dimension of scent and it effect on our bodies. Throughout her career, she was keen in experimenting with different artistic forms to present her work, using performance installations, sculptures, live performance, dance, multimedia, sound installations and olfactory art. In her projects, Serhal has collaborated with different researchers from different fields of study likes a physicist, chemists, economists and historians.

Jean-Daniel Piguet is a director, writer and performer. He grew up in a small village in the countryside (Negrefoyt), in south-west France, and is currently developing an artistic residency project there. He lives in Lausanne, where he trained as a stage director at the Manufacture HETSR - a course in which he now works as an instructor. He has written and directed three shows Pas Perdus (2016), Passe (2018) and Partir (2021), which explore the fictional potential of everyday life. He is currently pursuing his artistic research by examining the relationship between verbal and non-verbal communication. In doing so, he continues to explore how to use the tools of theatre to reveal the complexity and delicacy of human relationships. 

He enjoys working collaboratively, and has led projects with a number of artist friends, including Rémi Dufay, Yan Duyvendak, Oscar Gomez Mata, Maxime Gorbatchevsky, Mélina Martin, Camille Mermet, Floriane Mésenge, Marion Duval and Eleonore Bonah. 

Jean-Daniel Piguet's residency takes place in cooperation with Théâtre Saint-Gervais in Geneva. The residency is supported by the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia as well as Oertli-Stiftung.

Mati Jhurry’s practice concerns the tension between exoticism and the exotified; the labour and politics involved in selling escape, the performativity within luxury experience and the commodification of care. 
The postcolonial realities of her home island, Mauritius, are veiled by images of a tropical island paradise.  Mati engages with desire, escapism and aspirational culture in search of grasping the representational machine of the “dream island”. 
During her 3-month residency, Mati Jhurry will research the mechanics and aesthetics of luxury experience when palm trees and turquoise waters are replaced by snow covered alps and ski resorts.

Her artistic practice consistently explores the intersection of photographic imagery as a foundation for performative or sculptural installations. Spirina’s curiosity lies in images that have been displaced, converted, filtered, distorted, augmented, or automatised and the relationship these images have with the performing body.

Currently, her interests are centered around the transition between physical performance stagings, their documentation and metadata towards the digitalisation of performances. Just as the photographic image has been reshaped by its recent digital and networked transformations, Spirina observes that the human body has similarly lost its ability to remain spatially fixed. Throughout her works, she seeks to mediate this sense of placelessness and find appropriate tools to position the body and its image within today’s ever-elusive hyper-connected environments.

In 2017 Francesca started her personal artistic research, creating in 2018 the performance installation of long duration based on the action of jumping EXP: je voudrais commencer par sauter. In 2019 she co-creates with Alan Alpenfelt Mein Vater Erzählt Mir Jeden Sonntag Unsere Neun Planeten, a 24-hours radio and performance installation inspired by Space. In 2021 she creates Out of Me, Inside You (semifinalist at PREMIO Schweiz 2020), a live set celebrating the state of melancholy and includes the listening of the vinyl Out of Me, Inside You. Il tempo di rivoluzione è un giro attorno al sole (2022), an original sound work. A complementary project to these productions is «Happening»: a series of non-repeatable performances created for a specific context as well as a limited budget and time with the aim of focusing on the encounter between artists rather than the often controversial and complex production process. 

In 2022 Francesca was nominated for the Swiss Performance Art Award with the performance Out of Me, Inside You. 

She is co-founder of the movement TIB - Ticino is Burning (Swiss Performing Arts Awards 2022) putting into practice an exercise of providing space for opportunities, encounter and exchange besides action and critical reflection.  

Francesca Sproccati's residency takes place in cooperation with LAC Arte e Cultura Lugano. The residency is supported by the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia as well as Oertli-Stiftung.

Yuck Miranda’s work is spanning film and TV acting, theatre, music and vocal work, movement, dance, choreographing, directing, and teaching. Uniting their versatility and experiences in documentary direction, performances centered in the body and its expression through movement, sound and pacing, and facilitation of complex dialogues, gathered many technical and practical experiences throughout his participation in internationally renowned events, and through working with the biggest theatre and dance companies in South Africa, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Portugal, France, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, Italy, Brazil, Japan, but never forgetting their origins and investing in the performance arts community in Mozambique.  

Yuck attended the Visa Pour La Création Residency in 2019, received the Prince Claus Seed Award in 2021, was recognized as one of ASSITEJ International’s Next Generation Alumni in 2022, and was awarded a Pro-Helvetia Research Residency in 2023, which Yuck’ll be attending in the second half of 2024. 

Having focused the last few years on developing Non-Identified Identities, a project that aims to showcase the narratives of members of the LGBTQ+ community in countries that are deemed “safe” for queer people, his research is currently focused on reflecting about the queer figures that existed before colonialism came to Africa, while colonialism was installed, and after independence, particularly in Mozambique and sub-Saharan Africa, which are closer to his identity and experiences as a queer person in the world. 

Their work navigates the interplay between self-perception and external perceptions. They evoke a spectrum of dramatic and subtle emotions, often ambiguous or contradictory.  

They intervene on mundane objects, such as toilet paper, tights, yoghurt’s cup or razors in order to give those floating feelings a palpable materiality. As some like to say: «Facts don’t care about feelings», here feelings are facts. Their performance «Less Tears! More Actions!» was part of the Premio prize and premiered at la Bâtie-Festival in 2023. They perform concert throughout Switzerland in venue such Les Urbaines, Festival de la cité or Endless Bazaar. They produced music for performers such as Lisa Laurent and Baptiste Cazaux and Pauline Coquart. Since 2022, they have been an associated artist at L’Abri.  

Nelson Schaub's residency takes place in cooperation with L`Abri in Geneva. The residency is supported by the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia.

33EMYBW's debut album Golem, released on SVBKVLT, was voted one of the best electronic albums of 2018 by Bandcamp, introducing a wider audience to her self-described ‘limb-dance’ sound.  Sophomore album Arthropods was included in a number of ‘best of 2019’ lists, with Boomkat calling it ‘one of the years defining albums’, and Resident Advisor stating‘From an already bustling Shanghai underground, Arthropods is one of the scene's most original records yet.’ 

At the same time, she also pays attention to Chinese traditional culture. From 2016 to 2019, 33EMYBW planned the project DONG to redisplay the culture of the Dong minority. The project involved field research, music, publishing and exhibition theory. In early 2019, she released Dong 2 on Beijing's Meili Records, a concept album sampling traditional music, sounds and field recordings from the Dong ethnic group in south-west China. 

33EMYBW's performances include the opening of Warehouse Project (Manchester) curated by Aphex Twin, Unsound Festival (Poland), Nyege Nyege Festival (Jinja, Uganda), Soft Center Festival (Sydney) and Recombinant Festival (San Francisco).

Géraldine Chollet trained at the Laban Centre (London). She then has danced with different companies (Cie Jessica Huber, Cie Philippe Saire, Cie Unplush, Cie Prototype-Status). She has also worked as an actress with Cie Emilie Charriot and L'Alakran. Since 2006, she has trained with Ohad Naharin and the Batsheva Dance company to teach the Gaga movement language to dance and theatre professionals and amateurs. She teaches at the Manufacture (HETSR) and at the Annexe 36 in Lausanne.

Since 2011, Géraldine Chollet has been developing her own choreographic work with the Cie Rahu LaMo, with the pieces ITMAR (2014), OUVERTURE - a piece for dancers and a wandering audience (2021) and La Kabane (2022).

In parallel to her artistic practice, Géraldine has trained in spiritual counseling in hospitals.

In 2019 Hiba Mehrez was part of the «Stipendiat*innenprogramm Heidelberger Stückemarkt», her play Failed Exercise for Living in Arabic, was released as a radio play in 2020 and in the same year she directed a theatre reading in cooperation with the Barzakh Foundation and the Berlin House of Culture. In 2022 she edited a theatrical podcast about the theatre work and history in Syria for the Kammerspiele in Munich.

«I care about a set of words: freedom, art as a political tool and the ability to always enjoy what I do. I am motivated to provide an intersectional view to all my work.»

The Residency is organized in the frame of the Shifting Places program, initiated by Artlink and supported by the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia.

Shifting Places is an initiative that helps artists affected by war to continue their work in Switzerland.

Davide-Christelle Sanvee (1993, Switzerland/Togo) is a performance artist who focuses on spaces and staging. Investigating invisibility of individuals in public space, she hunts for architectural, behavioural and gestural elements to create scenographies that fully surround her spectators. In order to activate these new spaces Sanvee uses historical, collective memory and performative actions built around political and social realities.

After a bachelor's degree in visuals arts at HEAD - Geneva (2016), she obtained her master's degree at the Sandberg Institut in Amsterdam (2019). She is the winner of the Swiss performance Award 2019 with her performance "Le ich dans nicht".
Appearances (selection): Ways of Reading, E-flux, New-York; Le fond du Ricard, Fondation Ricard, Paris; Le ich dans nicht, Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau; Scuzi where is le château, Istituto Svizzero, Roma; Être la forteresse, Belluard Festival, Firbourg, Je suis Pompidou.e.x, Centre Pompidou, Paris.

Valeriia Temkina is a playwright and screenwriter living in St. Petersburg. She writes for various genres, including puppet theater, documentary theater, musicals and animation. During her residency at Kaserne, Valeriia is dealing with a dark chapter of recent Swiss history and works on a play about Verdingkinder. These children, completely without rights, were taken from their homes and forced to work, where they were mistreated and exploited. 
Valeriia's first book of plays, The Magnificent Rain, was published in 2021 in the New Names series. Her second book, (Not) Superfluous Things, will be published this year.

Simon was born in Grabs, Switzerland, grew up in Lugano and graduated at the Accademia dei Filodrammatici in Milan. He began working as an actor in various theatre productions. Since 2012 he has been a member of the Ricci/Forte ensemble, where he has performed in various productions and toured worldwide. He continues to live and work between Switzerland and Italy, working as a performer with various ensembles. In 2017 he makes his debut as a writer and director with the show "Adios and in the same year he founds Collettivo Treppenwitz together with other artists active in the theatre scene in Italian Switzerland. In 2019 he produces his second show "L'amore is nicht une chose for everybody (Loving Kills)"; the show is selected as a semi-finalist at  Premio Schweiz 2018 and at the Schweizer Theatertreffen 2020 and goes on tour through Switzerland, Italy and Spain. In 2020, he co-writes and directs "Sciù Sciù - Broken Becomes Beautiful" with Carla Valente, which is awarded the Anna Pancirolli Prize 2020. In 2021 he participates as assistant director in Collettivo Treppenwitz's third production, "KISS!" (Loving Kills), directed by Camilla Parini. In 2022 he participates as assistant director in the LAC Arte e Cultura production "Le relazioni pericolose" directed by Carmelo Rifici and as performer in the production "Amor fugge restando" (Loving Kills) directed by Anahì Traversi. From year 2020 he co-founds a movement called “Ticino is Burning” to tackle the complexities of artistic exchange between Ticino and rest of Switzerland.
 

As a performance-maker and choreographer, Toan Doan finds dance at the convergence of community and feminist queer world-making. Toan’s works explore personal/political matters such as gender, violence, loneliness, and belonging. Toan was trained in Yorchha (Contemporary Indian dance) and African-based movement. Born and raised in Quang Ngai, Toan is currently based in Ho Chi Minh city. Here, they have experimented with different modes of performance-making at MoT+++, San Art, A. Farm, Time Between, and the Goethe Institut in solos as well as collaborative projects with other sound, performance, video and visual artists. 
Toan was the 2022 artist-in-residence with MORUA in Hoi An, Vietnam, where they debuted their first ensemble choreographic work “Chiem Bao Thay Minh.” In 2023, Toan’s first film work “Buoyant” will be exhibited as part of the After the Cataclysm, Before the Storm project, organized by Gallery TPW in Toronto, Canada. 
 

Renata Carvalho began her path as an activist and volunteer for human rights and LGBTQ+ rights in 2007, when she already had a decade of experience as a theater director. In 2012, she debuted as an actress in the solo play Inside me lives another, in which her body became the subject of study and debate - a perspective that would shape her artistic work from that moment on.

In March 2017, Renata Carvalho founded MONART, Movimento Nacional de Artists Trans, as well as the manifesto Representatividade Trans, Já! - diga SIM ao talento trans, aiming at a collective, solid and inclusive representation of trans artists* in art spaces and ending the practice of "Trans Fake". In the same year, she also founded Coletivo T, the first artist collective composed exclusively of trans artists.

'When we are on a stage, we are confronted with all these prejudices against our bodies, which are still not seen as human bodies, as something natural – it is a body that causes discomfort and that is why it is so difficult for us. People do not believe that a ‘travesti’ is capable of discussing art in an intellectual or purposeful way. We always have to transcend barriers to be regarded as artists and not simply as exotic or folkloric bodies.'

Born in Belém do Pará, in the Brazilian Amazon, Mayara Yamada is a visual artist, performer and DJ living in Switzerland
Her research is developed mainly through performance but also includes other mediums such as photography, audiovisual, theater and music. The main themes at the heart of her work address subjects such as autobiography, the study of the body, landscape, memory and the use of pop culture. With a strong interest in researching the history of performance and the many ways in which her work can be developed through this language, she is interested in questioning notions of recording, archiving, reenactment, presence, theatricality and performativity. 
Currently her research intersects her stage-performative practice with her sound practice as a DJ, producing interactions throughout pop culture elements shared in between Brazil and Europe about its specific translations of the pop star figure. 

Sebastián Squella is an actor, writer and theater director, currently working as director of the companies "Teatro Perro Muerto" and "Zudamerikan Theater."  Teacher at the University of Valparaiso, previously worked as assistant of Marco layera and participated in the company the "Re-sentida" Also from 2010 to 2021 he co-directed the company Fénix e ilusiones in the penitentiary center Colina 1, a very important work within the prison and community theater in Chile, He also worked between 2010 and 2020 in the ENTEPOLA festival. In his roles as actor, director and student, he has participated in different and important stages, for example Avignon Festival, FIND (Schaubühne) Forum Theatertreffen, Festival Iberoamericano de Cadiz (Spain) Revolutión Festival (Albuquerque, USA) among others.   

For a text by Sebastián Squella about his work on Beyond Democracy and his residency at the Kaserne, click here.