GENEVA.- To decipher the world we live in, artists and filmmakers Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige (both born in 1969 in Beirut) have elaborated over the last decades a multimedia, research-based practice that confronts the real with the power of image-making, fiction, and poetry.

With the works presented here—Palimpsests, Time Capsules, and Trilogies—, Hadjithomas & Joreige investigate the ways visual art give significance to realities that have long remained out of sight. Drawing on geological methodologies and collaborations with practitioners of rescue archaeology, the artists propose representations challenging the writing of history, the visuality of the invisible, and the vertigo induced by deep time. They state: “this body of works explores the invisible remains of cities buried beneath our contemporary towns, testifying to the impact of human presence on Earth and its traces. It is about shifts in scale and time, uncovering, recycling, and covering over again, and how manmade violence and climatic disruptions affect possible narratives.”

Each work highlights a specific facet of their inquiry into subterranean worlds, through residues collected from sites in France and Lebanon. Palimpsests records the visual fascination generated by acts of drilling, excavation, and construction. A scopic drift, the film combines drone footage and microscopic images, wide shots and close-ups, rapid edits, and long sequences to offer a vision of time that is both concrete and fantastical.





Time Capsules proposes a visualization of history as a process of stratification, through the composition of uncovered core samples (rock, clay, artifacts, etc.). Here the artists devise a way to preserve and sculpt remnants that would otherwise been discarded.

In the Trilogies, the notion of timeline is reconsidered through parallel possible narratives and various forms of representation (photography, drawing, text).

With their works dealing with archeology, Hadjithomas & Joreige unveil underground messengers and buried images to question where we stand within an ongoing cycle of ruptures, continuities and discontinuities, catastrophe, and regeneration.

The exhibition, organized by Lionel Bovier, is part of MAMCO’s offsite program during the renovation of its building.

PALIMPSESTS
TIME CAPSULES & TRILOGIES

From compositions made with archaeological samples (stone, earth, objects, etc.), Time Capsules offers a visualisation of history as a process of stratification. Here, the artists have found a way to preserve fragmentary elements in sculptural form that would otherwise have been discarded.

Using archaeological fragments from sites in France and Lebanon, each work focuses on a specific aspect of this investigation into the underground world. Palimpsests thus captures the visual fascination of drilling, excavation and construction. Combining drone footage and microscopic images, wide shots and close-ups, fast-paced editing and long sequences, the film offers a concrete and fantastical vision of time, a true visual drift.

In the Trilogies, the notion of chronology is reconsidered through the lens of potential parallel narratives, thanks to the use of various forms of representation (photography, drawing, text).