............................................................................Gustav Gisiger

*Born in Biel/Bienne - Suisse in 1949, +died 14.07.2002 Bremen


1965-69 trained as a draftsman in Biel and Berne.

1970 moves to Zurich. Attends film class of the art school "Farbe + Form".

1972-76 trained as actor and director at the actors' academy in Zurich.

1976-81 as actor and director's assistant at the following theatres: Innerstadtbühne Aarau, Theater am Neumarkt Zurich, Nationaltheater Mannheim, Bremer Theater.

Since 1981 as freelance director and project manager in Bremen.

Since 1989/90 helping to establish the KünstlerHaus Bremen, being member of the board for four years.

Since 1993 directing and organizing a series of aristic events entitled "passiert" in the gallery of the KünstlerHaus; its focus is on the discovery and testing of fusion's of different arts and media and their presentation; fusions that make sense and are full of suspense.
Developed the light and sound project KRIEG DER ZEIGER at that time, is now working on the théâtre imaginaire together with Michael Sievert.

dec. 1994 studio staging of the first kinetic reflection sculptures for this project.

sept. 1995 "Licht auf Gerüst" - light composition with twenty-two projectors in the Meißen cathedral.

End of June 1996 - STELZEN-festival near Reuth - space projections in the barn together with a composition of agricultural machinery with and by Erwin Stache (Leipzig) and his crew.

dec. 1996 projections for the "SCHICHT" dance theatre with Minako Seki, Raimund Drießen, Martin Karl-Wagner and Zam Johnson. 1997

jan./feb. space design for théâtre imaginaire 2001 for Expo Switzerland 2001.

april took part in the "Ganz OHR sein" light and sound festival at Theaterhaus Jena.

july STELZEN-festival near Reuth; installation and performance in a Russian garage near the "stilt tree".

sept. installation and performance at the "transform" sound festival in Herne.

oct. 6 light compositions, projections with live music (Ensemble Horizonte Detmold and Helmut Lemke (Sheffield) at the Alstädter-Nicolaikirche in Bielefeld during the silent film festival at Bielefeld.

oct./nov. montage of the video film "passiert 1993-97".

nov./dec. preliminary work for the live dance scene of the théâtre imaginaire.

may - juin. creation of the stage-sculpture 'Expander XXL' for the dance performance ANIMA with Adriana Kocijan (dance) and Wolfgang Schliemann (percussion, Tibetan bells) or Wolfram Dix (percussion and voice).

Jun - Oct. performances with the productions SCHICHT and ANIMA in Germany (Bremen, Brandenburg, Dortmund, Göttingen, Frankfurt, Hamburg)

January 1999 opening performances of Imagine I in Bremen


Projects:


13./14.Aug. 1999: Direction and complete scene-concept for the Gelsenkirchen channel-project 'FORTISSIMO' - a region finds it's rhythm - with 500 participating exhibitors from the Ruhr area.

June to August 2000: Project 'Stadt am Fluss' in Bremen: Projections on facades and kinetic reflection-sculpture on the river Weser together with sound installation and music from Michael Sievert.

New theatre-project: 'CHOIR 2001', a theatre-production with actors, singers, dancers, performers and live-musicians.


 
   
 
   








The Light Space: Gustav Gisiger


A reflecting kinetic sculpture transforms projected information into a LIGHT SPACE.
The particular form of the sculpture turning on a vertical axis and the light information (forms, colours, signs, graphics and structures on the slide medium), which change according to a specific composition, allow the generation of multiple and rhythmically pulsating (dancing) bodies of light in a dark room that take the viewer into the world of light and movement phenomena. Thus a magic light dance is generated, a play of absolute signs and an abstract universe of rhythmically pulsating "body pictures".




théâtre imaginaire:


The théâtre imaginaire is an aesthetic product of light and motion, music and song. It is a product that works with chance and is yet perceived as a calculated enterprise, that is a succession of subtly connected, optical and acoustic operations. At the same time it demonstrates in ironical ambivalence its "mechanical" insufficiency and thus possesses features of a stage play which both indulges the dramatic moment and transmits it in the state of a temporary and contestable manifestation. With cultivated casualness illusion manifests itself as beautiful appearance, which is left to a game of order and chaos and is thus reserved for those who understand the birth of tragedy from the spirit of music and light as a cure for the media's staging of vanishing scepticism and reason.

Gisiger's théâtre imaginaire is closer to the idea of Moholy-Nagy's "light prop", even to Oscar Schlemmer's "Triad Ballet" and Nicolas Schöffer's "luminodynamic" constructions than any audio-visual media spectacle of our time. It transforms light and sound as a transient, ephemeral and mobile element into a symbol of the temporary and speculative. It is the counterpart of a virtual world, which pretends all the time to become concrete and yet does not offer anything else but the faint gleam of a reality which unmasks itself as untrue. It does so the more it tries to assure us that it is the perfect means of pragmatically overcoming a present which nobody evaluates "as experienced or as being his or her own".

Beatrix Nobis - Translated by Michael Stoeber and Dermot McElholm





 
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