[Winter 2025]
Le silence des murs
by Esther Bourdages
[EXCERPT]
Employing an in situ methodology based on research and supported by field studies, the artist Virginie Laganière captures moments in historically significant places and offers a critical gaze that brings their daily life into the present. At Occurrence, she presented a body of work centred on the former nuclear power plant in Lucens, Switzerland, which went into operation in 1966 and was shut down permanently following a radioactive accident in 1969. In the 1990s, the modernist structure was converted into a repository for the cultural assets of museums in the Vaud canton.
A political showcase and tool, the nuclear power plant embodies the architecture of power. Laganière probes the historic event that took place at the Lucens facility, which she considers a nodal point through which memories converge, at the intersection of past and future. The elaborate staging of the exhibition brought together modular sculptures, photographs, printed archival images, a video, and sound documentation produced in the field. The works juxtaposed fragments of stories, at the confluence of documentary and fiction, resulting from her observations and from interviews conducted with Swiss researchers, including a historian, an engineer, and an archaeologist.
Translated by Käthe Roth
[ Complete issue, in print and digital version, available here: Ciel variable 128 – CHANGE OF SCENE ]
[ Complete article in digital version available here: Virginie Laganière, Le silence des murs – Esther Bourdages]
Esther Bourdages is an author and independent curator in the visual arts field. She holds a master’s degree in art history from the Université de Montréal (her thesis subject was the Swiss sculptor Jean Tinguely) and studies sculpture in the broad sense (in situ art, installation), often in relation with sound art and digital arts.