Immaterial art in a material world 

As visions of a prosperous collective future struggle to take shape in today’s imagination, fiction and utopias emerge as essential narratives—counterpoints to the dystopias that color our present. In the age of globalized digital industries, digital art becomes a space for resistance, hope, and new forms of storytelling.

Fictions and utopias are becoming narratives that run counter to the increasingly real dystopias of the present.
Conceived in collaboration with the Némo Biennial, the Swiss Cultural Center, the virtual platform ORBIT_E of the Musée des Beaux-Arts Le Locle – MBAL (Switzerland), and the NOVA_XX Biennial of the Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles (CWB), this day offers a program of screenings, artist talks, and performances aimed at sketching out more desirable futures.

Program

6:00 PM – Roundtable: Nature, a Utopian Environment for Creation
With artists from the Les illusions retrouvées exhibition at CENTQUATRE-PARIS
Moderated by Gilles Alvarez, Artistic Director of the Némo Biennial

• Marc Lee, artist born in 1969, lives and works in Switzerland
• Phygital Studio, a company incubated at 104factory producing works at the intersection of technology and nature, Paris
• Ismaël Joffroy Chandoutis, born in 1988, lives and works between Paris and Brussels
• NeoConsortium, an artist project and collective founded in 2014 and based in Paris

7:15 PM – Roundtable: Immaterial Art in a Material World
Moderated by Tadeo Kohan, curator at the Swiss Cultural Center, Paris

• Marta Ponsa, Head of Artistic Projects and Cultural Outreach at Jeu de Paume, Paris
• Marlene Wenger, Curator at the House of Electronic Arts (H.E.K), Basel, Switzerland
• Kika Nicolela, artist and independent curator for the 2025 capsule of ORBIT_E, Le Locle, Switzerland
• Federica Chiocchetti, Director of the Musée des Beaux-Arts Le Locle, Switzerland
• Stéphanie Pécourt, Director of the Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles and Founder of the NOVA_XX Biennial, Paris

6:00–10:00 PM – ORBIT_E Focus:

Launched in 2022, the ORBIT_E digital platform is an online virtual extension of MBAL, designed to complement and extend the museum’s artistic programming.
Throughout the evening, digital works from the ORBIT_E platform will be shown on screens:

• L’Hypnose du Jardin by Lauren Huret
• Decompressed Prism by Salvatore Vitale
• ssloop.life by Alfatih
• Doomscrolling with 5 International Artists by Kika Nicolela

9:00 PM – Relaxation Performance by Lauren Huret – L’Hypnose du Jardin

Created from photographs of parks in Geneva, digitally modified and enhanced using AI software, this video composes a calming artificial paradise. Between dream, hallucination, and slowness, Lauren Huret offers a relaxation performance based on her work, like a visual and healing hypnosis.

Cover © Lauren Huret, L’Hypnose du Jardin, 4K video, 21 minutes, 2023. Co-produced by Pro Helvetia and MBAL Le Locle. Courtesy of Lauren Huret.