Kerim Seiler

Rather than thinking of space as utilitarian, I try to uncover its poetic qualities through my compositions. Visitors have the liberty to become viewer, performer, director in a poem that is being written as it happens: It's up to them really to decide what role they care to take.

Imagination is half the truth. If I can imagine a composition, my work-performance starts. I see the production process as part of the final composition and it varies a lot, just like my work varies from large-scale installations to classical dry-point printmaking, and from public space to commercial art gallery.

Thank you for this truly interesting question. In the art world, reusing elements of older works is not common practice. Production generally focuses on unique oeuvres that are then inserted to the art market and - hopefully - find their way into private or public collections and their respective vaults.
Many of my works do fit into this category. But there's a whole range of compositions I created that are rooted in a more conceptual approach in which final shape and material configuration are not ultimately defined. This loose collection of works forms what I call the Situationist Space Program. These works as well as their components build the stockpile for larger concepts like Come Together.
This all sounds very serious, but it's a very playful approach.

Analemma and Mindspace are both structural compositions to occupy and forget at the same time. They can serve as tools to look at reality as if it were a theatre piece, which makes me think of the Olympics without an audience in Tokyo. In time, I expanded my focus from the grandstand to the all-over. Space became my canvas.

I had the chance to meet Christian Herdeg, one of the true masters of Neon Art in my mid-twenties. He introduced me to gas, glass, and high voltage. But it was only through a random invitation to compose a Neon artwork for a square in Geneva that I embraced the medium. I didn't get the job, but the seed was planted.

Every medium has its qualities, its time and its place. I hope people are seduced by discovering something about themselves through my work. After all, what we see is produced in our mind.

There has never been a better time for positivity. I think this is true throughout History. Joy is that one emotion that makes us Come Together in a good way. Understand my work as a contribution along those lines.

There used to be a Grande Albergo in Locarno where people would meet after the big screen on the Piazza Grande went black. Every night, extensive fiestas would arise where people from all over the world would gather and embrace the moment. That location was, in a way, the pulsating heart of the Festival. Investors bought it and shut it down. My dream is that the festival-goers will in Come Together and find a space of liberties similar to those in that [Grande Albergo] hotel.

You can think of Come Together as a retrospective with existing works alongside new compositional elements and works by guest artists. Dorothea Strauss who heads the CSR Department of the Swiss insurance la Mobiliare and co-curated this project also chose some works from their art collection and commissioned some new works by Maya Rochat, Julian Charrière and Ekrem Yalçinda.

Rose Sélavy, Arthur Cravan, Daniel Buren, Gordon Matta-Clark and Quantum Physics.