Alan Bogana | Home Not Alone Residency

What will a residency become without travel? In response to the global COVID-19 pandemic that has closed borders, Pro Helvetia offices in Zurich and across the world have developed a “Home Not Alone” residency option for artists that were scheduled for a residency in 2020.

The Home Not Alone residency follows a similar format to the regular residency, as during the course the artist will receive financial and technical support from Pro Helvetia, including the provision of a coach. A unique aspect will be the fostering of a community of practice among the participating artists, with opportunities created for artists across the different contexts of our work to develop an informal network, engage with each other’s work, share thoughts and reflections on their daily lives and work processes.

Alan Bogana‘s one-month Home Not Alone residency in Switzerland will be will consist of local studio practice, remotely-based research in China as well as coaching provided by Chronus Art Center in Shanghai.

During this home residency, he will work on the scenario and the development of a computer-generated video work. The work will explore and expand on the utopian visual culture of laser light, by means of science-fictional narratives and motion capture techniques.

An augmented, abstract, dematerialized living being made of laser lights will be the protagonist of this new artwork, which will investigate in a peculiar way the multiple relationships between light, the human body and technology.

He will remotely research on the numerous gadgets that attach lasers to body parts as well as on the use of lasers in Chinese acupuncture medicine, in order to nourish the development of his artwork.

Coaching from Chronus Art Center will provide a critical point of view on the development of this new work and will facilitate remotely-driven research.

During the two months of his live residency in China, he would like to research on a series of topics related to what I call the “utopian imagination”, on issues related to the downsides of technological development as well as on different aspects of Chinese people’s relationship to light.

More specifically and according to his original plan, Bogana will research on the Chinese space program, its impact on the imagination of Chinese people, indoor skydiving culture, light pollution, its impact on the relationship of Chinese people with the celestial vault, electrical blackouts as well as contemporary visual culture of lasers.

Parts of the computer-generated work, developed during the home residency, will be integrated in a video essay that will be shot during the live residency. This video essay will be enriched by and will intertwine footages, reflections and data from onsite research on the aforementioned topics.

(Banner image: Alan Bogana, Found images, from “Polarising Times”, 2020)