A MILLION-YEAR PICNIC

 video installation, 4K, color, loop, variable duration, 2024

"In a Mars-like scenery or on an unknown planet, three scientists talk about the challenges of space research, about recent discoveries and imaginary mindscapes.  Violaine Sautter, planetary geologist and member of NASA’s Curiosity and Perseverance missions encounters cosmologist Camille Bonvin and Didier Queloz, a Nobel Prize-winning astronomer for his discovery of exoplanets—planets outside our solar system—. The title of the video installation, A Million-Year Picnic (2024) refers to the eponymous short story by Ray Bradbury from 1946, which is part of his Martian Chronicles in which a family must leave Earth and finds its own mirror image while looking for Martians. Nowadays we ask: How much of ourselves do we recognise when we look at Mars? What kind of past or future life are we looking for in the universe? The video installation is the outcome of a polyphonic and interdisciplinary work process created in collaboration with the dramaturg Eric Vautrin at the Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne."

– Sarah Mühlebach

 

Co-production Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne, with the generous support of La Ville de Genève, Loterie Romande, Canton de Genève, Fondation Leenaards, Pourcent Culturel Migros, La Mobilière.

This artwork is part of the OCCUPY MARS project.