Galeria Quadrado Azul is pleased to announce the beginning of the second year of the collective project The Grotto with the intervention Theodora or The Progress: Becoming Dog by Elise Lammer with Lucien Monot, and Julie Monot.

Elise Lammer' s performance reinforces The Grotto as a place, to expand new possibilities for the development and experience of art, through new cosmogonies and new forms of empathy.

Dogs have proven throughout histories and mythologies to fulfill very important roles, often being the carriers of a knowledge lying across what’s visible and what isn’t; between consciousness and subconsciousness; life and death; wilderness and civilization. Recently the philosopher Mark Alizart wrote an essay placing the figure of the dog as thinker ― one who may know the true secret of our humanity. Shifting hierarchies, a dog’s submission is therefore anything but servile. When considered through the prism of equality, active submission becomes a higher form of humility, a soft power that can eventually lead to a dominant role.

Becoming Dog is part of Theodora or The Progress, a year-long project exploring the topic of empowerment by means of non-verbal communication. Organized by the research platform Alpina Huus, public exhibitions and performances will be presented and documented in various art institutions in Europe between 2020-2021, and later edited into a 16mm feature film.

Julie Monot is graduated with a Bachelor of Visual Arts from HEAD Geneva, and a MA from ECAL in Lausanne. Working across various mediums, such as performance, video, photography or installation, she focuses on the limits of corporeal externality and its modes of representation, among other things. Her appeal for transformation is rooted within her previous professional career as a makeup artist, and her experience in the field of the living arts. Recent exhibitions include Modern Nature, An Homage to Derek Jarman pt. 1, La Becque, la Tour-de-Peilz, CH (2019); Green Room, Arsenic, Contemporary Performing Arts Center, Lausanne, CH (2019); Overdressed, Abordage, Saint-Sulpice, CH (2019); Ich, Ich Sehe Dich, Istituto Svizzero, Rome, IT (2018); Ending Explained, DOC Paris, Paris , FR(2018); Artagon IV - Heading East!; Magasin Généraux, Paris, FR (2018); Alpina Huus, Le Commun Bâtiment d’Art Contemporain, Geneva, CH (2017)

Somewhere between documentary and the fiction, Lucien Monot’s works exclusively with a 16mm Bolex camera. The filmmaker explains that what draws him to this particular medium is how it seems to enhance his characters, while offering a more, tangible and sensible relationship to images. Lucien Monot has screened his films in various institutions and festival nationally and internationally, including 25th Vision du Réel Festival, Nyon, CH (2019); 55th New York Film Festival, New York, US (2017); 70th Locarno Festival, Locarno, CH (2017); 69th Locarno Festival, Locarno, CH (2016); 52 Solothurner Filmtage, Solothurn, CH (2017); 31st Fribourg International Film Festival, Fribourg, CH (2017); Bucharest International Experimental Film Festival BIEFF, Bucharest, RO (2018). In 2016, he was awarded with the Swiss Life Silver Pardino at the 69th Locarno Festival for his movie Genesis.

Elise Lammer was trained as a fine artist in Barcelona and holds an MFA in Curating from Goldsmiths College, London. She is a curator at Kunstverein SALTS in Birsfelden, and since 2015, the director of Alpina Huus, a research platform exploring performance and domestic space currently in residence at Arsenic, Contemporary Performing Arts Centre in Lausanne. Through a 3-year research project she is developing since 2018 a garden and archive in homage to Derek Jarman at La Becque | Artist Residency in La Tour-de-Peilz. As an artist, curator and writer, Elise Lammer has participated in exhibitions in institutions and galleries internationally, including Centre Culturel Suisse, Paris; Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow; Istituto Svizzero di Roma, Rome; MAMCO, Geneva; The Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin; The Goethe Institut, Beijing, Hong Kong; MCBA, Lausanne; among others. She is a contributor of CURA. and Mousse Magazine.

Alpina Huus. Exploring Performance and Domestic Space. Initiated in March 2015 at the Schinkel Pavillon in Berlin, Alpina Huus is a practice-led project and research platform dedicated to investigate the relationship between performance and domestic space. As a non-for-profit and itinerant platform, Alpina Huus has authored many performances, conferences and exhibitions in partner institutions Europewide, including at the Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin; Istituto Svizzero di Roma; Motto Berlin; Bâtiment D’art Contemporain (Le Commun) Geneva; and Arsenic, Contemporary Performing Arts Center, Lausanne. Since 2017 Alpina Huus regularly collaborates with Arsenic, Contemporary Performing Arts Center, Lausanne, who hosts regular performance-led exhibitions by contemporary artists.