Video Works on MIRE Screens – Léman Express Stations

MIRE, a project supported by the contemporary art funds of the Canton and City of Geneva, commissions and presents video works on the screens located in Léman Express railway stations across the Greater Geneva region. Three of these works engage specifically with dance and the moving body: those by Cecilia Bengolea, Gabriela Löffel and Angelica Mesiti. For DFTL26, Arta Sperto has invited the FCAC (Fonds cantonal d’art contemporain) and the FMAC (Fonds d’art contemporain de la Ville de Genève) to present these three works in the railway stations throughout the festival, creating a dialogue between the MIRE and DFTL programmes.

With TRYPTIK, Cecilia Bengolea shares her research into dancehall culture in the specific context of the Jamaican community, juxtaposing it with images of a choreography created with the Jamaican national synchronised swimming team.

Nous n’avons pas besoin de nous connaître à l’avance is a hybrid video work alternating between moments of dance, archival footage and textual quotations. Gabriela Löffel draws on the political dimension of public space to develop her reflection, creating a visual essay inspired by philosopher and gender theorist Judith Butler, which stages the “performativity of bodies in this zone of political action.”

Sidereal is a filmed performance that refers to the movement of the stars. In this work, Angelica Mesiti presents two dancers suspended from the ceiling and connected to each other by a harness. Filmed in a fixed shot, the figures spin around themselves and pivot around one another at a slow and gentle pace, their movements at first appearing to be governed by the principle of gravity.

With Untitled (Steel Bar), Aurélien Dougé continues his research into the relationship between the body and matter through the use of a four-metre-long steel bar. On a square platform, the performer continuously turns around himself while holding the bar in his hands. The object acts both as a physical constraint and as an extension of the body, redistributing points of support, forces and lines of tension. The work is presented here as a triptych video installation made in 2026 with WIPART (Adrianne Louet and Claude Quéré).

The video Lady Thames by Katja Schenker is a video performance recorded in the bed of the River Thames at low tide. The receding tide transforms the urban landscape, revealing accumulations of smooth, rounded bricks, a characteristic building material in London for centuries. Within this exposed urban landscape, the body also loses its fixed point of view, finding a new orientation at the centre of a circular movement.