The new university campus on the Pérolles plateau before the backdrop of the Zähringer city Fribourg’s gates comprises three buildings by the architecture and planning office B in Bern. The placement and volumes of the three buildings have formed a rectangular piazza: a clear urban outdoor space for pedestrians also intended as a central meeting point for students.
Building ornament was an issue long debated, a matter-of-fact question of decoration. The past few decades have witnessed a gradual change in the relationship between art and building. Art today is viewed in partnership with architecture and is intended to set its mark in the conscious discourse with its surroundings. One speaks of “Art & Building,” “Art and the City,” or “Urban Art” interventions in public or urban space. “Art & Building” is understood as the force field which will open up a further-reaching discussion.
The newly created public force field, nearly 200 meters long, is delineated by a row of young trees and enlivened by a four-part installation by Geneva artist Anne Blanchet entitled Pont de Lumière. A total of 18 red lacquered barriers, each five meters in length, are affixed to square red columns, 350 cm. in height, accentuating the long connecting path. This straight horizontal ordering is playfully broken up at irregular distances. Corresponding to their inherent character, the barriers are in constant action. Each one plays its own “music” -- each barrier at a different time and in its own tempo swings up to become vertical, falls back into horizontal place, and swings up again. Thus a ballet of the 18 barriers following a predetermined choreography is constantly moving to lend the space another life with its red linear structures. Corresponding to the themes that have always characterized Anne Blanchet’s work – light, space, and movement – the artistic intervention, originally merely intended as public lighting, is crowned by light. Logically, Pont de Lumière finds its completion at dusk and at night: the white neon tubes affixed to the barriers in constant movement, illuminate another aspect of their environment, place accents, and allow for a multiplicity of light and shadow images. As a totality, the work is a three-dimensionally mobile light creation.
Different choreographies with different tempos – Anne Blanchet calls them musiques visuelles – were created by the artist for this work. Each movement of the barriers varies between 10 and 180 seconds, although tempos for raising, lowering, and standing still are of a different character in each piece and in each turnpike. Thus a slow, continuous, sometimes barely perceptible work; a further dynamic one, with emphasis on opening; and a third quite quick-paced, intended to dispense fresh energies, all take place. Pauses – intervals of tranquillity – are sometimes introduced; it can happen that the barriers are “struck dumb” for 15 minutes in order, with no further ado, to let things take their own course, to hypnotize vision, and to calm the soul. Three times a day, at 8, 12 o’clock, and 16.30, the different pieces, played one after the other, can be consciously experienced.
Barriers refer to borders and offer consolidation. Barriers that open lead hopefully onward. The space opens until a further barrier again closes it. One space after the other is gradually made known. Borders are plumbed and borders can be reinstalled to create new spaces or they can disappear completely. Each moment is unique and each moment plays its own music until the very last border of life has been reached, after which the space leads to the unknown.
Specifically related to the life of the college, the dancing barriers - now wandering structures, now moving light – can communicate to students the elementary experience of their own activity. Each discovery opens new perspectives, allowing new structures and, simultaneously, new limits to be felt.
With this, at first glance, absurd, upon closer viewing –now disassociated from its original function – symbol-laden game of opening and closing, entering and departing, receiving and rejecting, Anne Blanchet has dedicated herself to fundamental research on space. This is a theme already creatively approached by the artist in earlier works, among them constantly moving barriers equipped with spotlights, lines of transparent sliding doors, a trio of automatic folding doors in which each according to its character opens and again closes (Portes 97: Musique Visuelle, 1997, Ouverture Pli 1999, Passages 99: Musique Visuelle, 1999).
The artist’s elementary and fundamental preoccupation with the natural environment and the sensations of light and shadow can been seen not only in the aforementioned installations. These are also components of a further comprehensive work cycle entitled Light Drawings, continuously developed by Blanchet since 1994. Matte plexiglass is marked with fine, barely visible cuts. Light penetrates, light fills the enclosed white space while subtle white tones and shadows draw, each depending on location or light, a different flat or spatial image.
Contained within an abstract light-filled game of lines or as a challenge to take action, the message is transmitted in immediate sensual experience.
Esther Maria Jungo, Art historian
Translation. Claire Bonney