The Centre de la photographie Genève is happy to host the second edition of the biennale PIPAS. This photographic event, designed for and with pupils, invites around forty classes from the canton of Geneva to discover and experience the skills involved in organising a photography bienniale: conceptualising projects, producing photographs and texts, and even setting up exhibitions and leading public outreach event. The Centre de la photographie Genève is delighted to contribute to this educational project, sharing its knowledge and expertise and offering significant public visibility by exhibiting the resulting photographic projects in its exhibition space.
PIPAS aims to raise awareness and educate students about the many issues related to images, through reflection and practice. Since the digital revolution, the new generation has been caught up in a flood of images. It seems essential that children and young people be able to construct an inner space of perception, a distance that allows them to analyse these images. Moreover, in an increasingly dematerialised world, where ideal models are as omnipresent as they are unattainable, it also seems fundamental that children and young people should be able to experience the creative process, with its own rhythm, its moments of frustration and satisfaction, and the pride of achievement. Thinking, anticipating, questioning, contextualising, trying, achieving, sharing: through this practical learning, the event promotes the acquisition of knowledge and skills in an autonomous, concrete and reflective manner. PIPAS also aims to promote the school as a creative and cultural actor in the area where it is located.
Each biennial event revolves around a theme. After Photo-récits [Photo-Stories] for the first edition, Le Quotidien est ailleurs [The Everyday is Elsewhere] is the title of the 2024 bienniale: a deliberately enigmatic, poetic phrase that everyone can interpret and appropriate very freely. Everyday, elsewhere: two words intended to guide or open up horizons. The everyday can be gestures, things that are repeated, things we are no longer even aware of, an everyday reality that we no longer even see. Elsewhere can be what is distant, different, outside, foreign, perhaps even strange. The two words can be mixed together, taking on the meaning that each person wants them to have. Quite simply, everyday life can also be what is photographed, and elsewhere what the photographer wants to show when taking a picture. Their perspective. Behind this open expression lies PIPAS‘ desire to explore the multiple relationships between photography and reality. Photography may seem to be merely a capture of reality, but in reality, as we know, it is always the result of a choice, a creative gesture. It is this creative gesture that the 2024 theme seeks to inspire.
The project is divided into two phases. From September to May, pupils are presented with images and asked to interpret and decode them, but also, and above all, to create their own. To do this, they work with professional photographers from Geneva and/or their teachers. In May, the bienniale opens to the public, with an exhibition at the Geneva Photography Centre and outdoors in the Jonction eco-neighbourhood, as well as a programme of events and cultural mediation. With the aim of supporting learning in the broadest possible way, students from various educational institutions in Geneva are invited to participate in all aspects of the biennial: creation of the visual identity by students from the CFP Arts, production of exhibition materials by students from the CFP Construction, communication on Instagram by students from the Digilab team at Espace Entreprise, and welcoming the public by students from Espace Entreprise.
Further information on the website of PIPAS.
With the support of Ecole&Culture and Fonation Baur.
