“Words have meanings: some words, however, also have a ‘feel’. The word ‘community’ is one of them.”

In the essay Community (2000) Zygmunt Bauman explores the notion of “community” as a place that we vehemently desire. For him, the word has a feel; a feel that could be perceived as the wish to create bonds with others, to welcome and be welcomed, to offer a space for conversation and to be heard.

BIENNOPHONE is a residency and collective exhibition project that engages with the topics of community and togetherness in the name of the city that opened its doors to the new space’s initiative. For eight weeks, the eight invited artists of BIENNOPHONE are occupying the spaces of KRONE COURONNE one week after the other, leaving behind existing, in process or newly produced works. Conceived as an evolutive and accumulative project, the exhibition will culminate in its full form in April 2021.

BIENNOPHONE is the combination of the words “Bienne” and “phone” as the etymological term for “voice”. Indeed, the eight invited artists are in one way or another tied to the city of Biel/Bienne, whether born and raised, de passage or new to the city. BIENNOPHONE is also the name of the historic Swiss radio manufacturing brand first produced in Biel/Bienne in 1925, at that time still in the form of a gramophone. Despite its disappearance from the Swiss market in 1988, the BIENNOPHONE has become heritage and here takes the form of a metaphor of the collective voice.

The BIENNOPHONE sounds, resonates, crackles, informs and distorts. Like a megaphone, the exhibition projects the voice of the Biel/Bienne artists to the outside.

Vitrine Residencies
26.02. – 06.03.2021 Mirja Curtius
07.03. – 13.03.2021 Nora Renaud
14.03. – 20.03.2021 Marcel Freymond
21.03. – 27.03.2021 Raphael Loosli
28.03. – 03.04.2021 Vera Trachsel
04.04. – 10.04.2021 Jeanne Jacob
11.04. – 17.04.2021 Raphael Hefti
18.04. – 25.04.2021 Florence Jung

Exhibition text (PDF)

The exhibition programme is supported by the City of Biel/Bienne, Canton of Bern, Kulturstiftung GVB, Temperatio.