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The ART SAFIENTAL Biennial in the Swiss Safiental (Safien valley) is taking place right at this moment until October 23rd, 2022. This year, the Land Art is presented under the theme Learning from the Earth. We had the pleasure to be able to interview the founder of Art Safiental, Johannes Hedinger, who gave us a wonderful overview of the unique location of the Biennial. He also shared with us how Art Safiental has developed in the remote Safien valley over the last 8 years, and where the foundation is headed. This is part 1 of 2.
Johannes Hedinger and I met in beautiful Zurich, Switzerland, to speak about his involvement in and his development of Art Safiental and ILEA, the Institute for Land and Environmental Art.
I come from a diverse, multi-faceted background. On the one hand artistic, yet also encompassing education and research.
I studied art, art history, and the roots of the German language. Did my post grad in art in Los Angeles and Berlin. This was followed by other studies as well.
In the last six years, I’ve worked as an art curator. For our project, Art Safiental, but also for other projects.
I also still work on my own art projects. One of those consists of us traveling around the world with a tree trunk. During the last 2 years, said tree trunk has been in lockdown in Chile. It will hopefully soon move on towards India.
This kind of art is a collaborative, procedural long-term project. And has nothing to do with the classic understanding of art and of the object-oriented art which you may find in museums.
Rather, this kind of art is about the process, about artistic, cultural, and educational exchange. About expanding away from conventional spaces and methods.
It is harder to communicate to an audience, and even harder to sell. But there must be other means as well to convey unconventional forms of art and culture.
Thinking of Art Safiental, it is also hard to charge an entry fee for art outside a museum. We would have to put multiple ticket booths all over the Safien valley. And even then, we would never be able to cover and secure the entire ground.
Instead, people can donate if they wish. As a Land Art organization, we depend on sponsors, foundations, and public organizations to support our efforts.
Because the classic understanding of, “Sell your pictures to make money” doesn’t work in this context.
The story of Art Safiental and ILEA has its seeds in the arts, of course.
However, as I mentioned, my background is in art, research, as well as education, and thus these became the three pillars of ILEA, the Institute for Land and Environmental Art: Art, Research, and Education.
I am not originally from Safiental (the Safien valley). However, around 10 years ago, I shot a film there for the Singapore Biennial. And I spent some private vacation time there as well.
Thus, I knew this was a very special place. Beautiful, remote, rough, wild, and with great potential to become a place of artistic inspiration and collaboration.
The place is very unique. It is poor in structure and – in a sense – empty. Our Biennial Art Safiental is placed throughout the entire Safien valley. We are talking a length of 25 kilometers and an area of 150 square kilometers.
Only around 900 people live in this valley. 500 live at the valley entrance in 2 separate villages. The rest of the valley has only 400 inhabitants.
The village which is home to our institute has only 100 inhabitants. There are far more cows and sheep in this valley than people.
Essentially, you have a lot of peacefulness, quiet, and space there.
The Safien valley is also hard to get to. Closest larger town is Chur, but from there you need to take busses as well. Or, if you come by car, it’ll still be a long drive into the mountains. Then, as you drive or walk into the valley, you come to a dead end at the far end of it.
Interestingly, the Safien valley was populated by people who had crossed the mountains, because 120 years ago it was too difficult to get through the lower entrance of the valley because of the canyons.
Thus, the people of the Safien Valley were isolated for a long time. They lived in their own world. Which is something you can sense when you visit there now.
There is practically no contemporary culture up there. It is one of the most structurally poor valleys in Switzerland. Without government subsidies, the farmers would not have been able to survive.
Thus, there is not much infrastructure in this valley, except water management facilities. These are all below ground however, so you won’t notice.
These water management structures were built around 50 years ago. All the water from the Valser Valley flows through the Safien Valley and then further down the mountain. It is a lot of water coming through which helps produce large amounts of electricity.
Other than this, the landscape looks pretty much like it might have already looked 700 years ago. Small, traditional-style buildings and the nature all around looks quite wild.
Yet it isn’t. Because a lot of forests were cleared. Much land was farmed. Instead of untouched nature what you’ll find is more of a cultural landscape.
However, if you wouldn’t continue to maintain the land, within a short period of time nature would surely reclaim all.
This is quite visible looking at the old access road into the valley, which was replaced with a tunnel some time ago. Within only 15 years, this old road now looks like the setting of a post-apocalyptic movie. It is already largely grown over and falling apart.
Nature takes over and claims back her territory when there is no more maintenance. And that is a quality. It is something we want to emphasize. We want to show where and how humans intervene with nature.
To build a road or a dam is a harsh intervention. To farm a field is an intervention as well, more permanent than temporary. Then there is us, Art Safiental, placing our art pieces, which is an intervention as well, albeit a temporary one in most cases.
Of course, art is always centered on us as human beings and our understanding of the world. The artists are human. You, right this moment, are writing as a human. And a human being will read this article interpreting it again in their unique way.
We reflect from our perspective as a human being.
We are trying and will try to bring in more different perspectives as well in the years to come through focusing more on scientific research as well, including fauna and flora on a different level. The aim here is to show that we as humans are not on top of the ladder but part of a whole. Everything is connected.
We are trying to break up the hierarchy. But this is of course a highly theoretical and philosophical part of our work at ILEA and Art Safiental.
So, when we slowly began around 2014, realizing that the Safien Valley is where we wanted to be, we approached the mayor.
He was open to our ideas and said, “Yes, this interests me. And it will be a good thing because it will bring people into our valley.”
The initial idea was to build a summer school through which we would have brought in many international lecturers and participants to work on temporary pieces of art. Basically just a bunch of creative people who’ll then work 10 days in the valley. In and with nature.
However, the mayor and other stakeholders of the local community said, “We like the general idea, but we would like to have something more. So that the locals as well as visitors in the valley can participate as well.”
And that’s how we came up with the Biennial quite quickly, so that we have longer-lasting pieces of art to view and experience. However, we did keep the academy idea as well.
Thus, both began to grow in unison: the Biennial and the academy.
The first Biennial was in 2016, our pilot so to speak. It was completely low budget. But we became quickly very successful with it. Not financially, but in terms of exposure.
Financially, the entire endeavor was supported by the local communities and the office of tourism. As well as supported by everyone in our small team personally, through idealism, and lots of unpaid labour.
No one had expected our first Biennial to become such a huge success. We even had art projects which became an international sensation. For example, the Zero-Star Hotel, which was in essence just a bed, without surrounding walls, out in nature. This project received a lot of attention.
Suddenly, we were a player in the Land Art artistic world, and this of course also brought value and revenue to the valley.
More visitors showed up, they needed a room for the night, ate something, bought local produce, etc. For an isolated valley like Safien which normally only had a minimum of tourism, this was a drastic change. In the end, our project became very interesting for the Safien valley marketing.
Artistically, our approach was interesting for many visitors.
Land Art goes back to the Sixties when artist began to break out from the confines of art galleries and museums. Back then, artists broke out of the art market.
It all originated in the United States, as well as Great Britain. They were the first who went out into the wilderness, so to speak.
The Wilderness. Where you have to walk, drive, or travel long distances to get to what you want to see.
All this was important for us, too. It was never about selling art. I am not interested in the art market, even though I worked there in the past as well.
A visitor of Art Safiental will have to walk 2 hours or more to get to an artwork. You must earn it. And the physical path to the art is part of the experience.
The experience can even change. It depends on the temperature, your personal form, the time of day, the season. Sometimes this even becomes more important. And the environmental conditions can also change the artwork itself. There is a difference if you see it in morning light or at dusk. It’s always different.
In addition to wanting to relate to the earliest motivations for Land Art, it was important to us to not only include nature, but also the local people, their society, culture, and community.
Our first Biennial was pretty much as much also a way for us to find out what is possible.
The 2nd time it came around we had the rather conceptual theme Horizontal Vertical. Then the 3rd Biennial ran under the title Analog Digital. For this theme, technology naturally played a definite role. We had for example a project virtually mapping the landscape, virtual reality, augmented reality, etc.
This year we have a chosen a theme which will surely occupy us for a longer period: Learning from the Earth. We are also working with this as a basis in the academy and in scientific research.
Since about 2 years ago, we have added scientific research as a third pillar.
We are aiming more and more to have a holistic approach in how we combine artistic expression and ecological awareness in the Safien valley.
Since two years as well, we have founded ILEA, the Institute for Land and Environmental Art, as the umbrella organization encompassing our art academy, the Art Safiental biennial, and the scientific research.
We are still working on all the legal details. Currently ILEA still rests under the nature parc which is basically an economic organization of the Safien valley region and community. The regional and communal administration are our main supporters. They also help us with our administration and with networking in the valley.
Long term, we’ll need to become independent. This is still a work in progress and largely a question of being able to get enough sponsorship and financial support.
It is hard work, because you always work with a view towards the future and the hope that things will work out. But there is no guarantee.
So, all this to explain the backbone of our organization. Where we are and why we are where we are.
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Liam Klenk was born in Central Europe and has since lived on four continents. Liam has always been engaged in creative pursuits, ranging from photography and graphic design, to writing short stories and poetry, to working in theatre and shows. In 2016, Liam published his first book and memoir, 'Paralian'.
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