Gabriela Gerber/Lukas Bardill “Partnun 1 - 7”

Shedhalle / Exhibitions / Lands End / Artists

Gabriela Gerber/Lukas Bardill, Switzerland: “Partnun 1 - 7”, (still), videoinstallation, 2008

This video installation makes the agricultural use of land in Graubünden its topic in a very unusual way. Seven monitors of different sizes run different sequences of hay making in the mountains, by hand and with the help of machines. In bird’s-eye view, we see tireless dots and unforeseeable movements in the green grass. We see people making hay, putting the grass on large cloth, as well as large machines busily climbing steep hills and cruising roads. In between, we see hayricks, cloths, or strangely steep hillsides. The whole mountain seems in motion, a hustle and bustle, only interrupted by gaps in time: Here, one machine disappears, there, one appears, here one cloth gets unstuck and slowly glides down the hill like a parachute.

“Partnun 1–7” shows the ambivalent picture of agricultural use of land, focusing on the paradox between handicraft and industry, exploitation and decay, depicting alpine landscape as some automatic machine with failures and interruptions.