Innovative Curatorial Projects – Paris / SingaporeSamuel Bester
*1975, Geneva, Switzerland. Lives and works in France.
A Franco-German born in Geneva, Samuel Bester studies in the school of Decorative Arts of Strasbourg in 1992 when he becomes aware, with the complicity of Jean-François Guiton, of the importance that video will take in his life and in his artistic research. Meetings with Sarkis, Robert Cahen, Jochen Gerz and Harun Farocki nourish his approach. At the edge of different styles, his films are of documentary and experimental inspiration.
Sylt (The land where the ground shrinks) / France-Germany / 2010 / 122' / 4:3 and 16:9
The island of Sylt, one of the most beautiful islands of northern Germany, is in danger. Rising sea levels, successive storms and constant winds announce its disappearance. Man answers back with frenetic and obsessive gestures. But how do you save nature without betraying it, since letting it live is perhaps also letting it die? Through the mapping of filmic, photographic and sound work completed in a fifteen year period, Samuel Bester explores this territory in turmoil.
With five experimental films, one documentary, an audio creation and photographic work, he draws a subjective map of the island, a poetic and tragic testimony of its metamorphoses.