Nicolas Cilins

Nicolas Cilins is a conceptual, video and performance artist from Geneva. Much of Cilins’ work is collaborative. They engage people and communities to cooperate and participate in the creative process. Whether it is calling upon African magicians, Romani prostitutes, or refugees around Europe, the result of these collaborations, with its embedded irony, seems to challenge clichés and the individual, scrutinising the particular across the European continent and beyond.
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☰ New monograph Stills From Seven Works published by NERO, Rome is available for order here

Collected video extracts

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Healing Routine
A situation and three-channel video installation, 18’
2022
Healing Routine is a situation. The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum in Geneva has commissioned Cilins to create a performance on the issue of care with its employees. Cilins has delegated this work to two care professionals, two therapists who utilise dance for healing. The resulting three-channel video work intervenes the dance exercises with the personal anecdotes of the participants. Healing Routine gives a voice to the team who is never shown while at the same time shedding light on the ethnocentric, heteronormative and colonial aspects of the museum's main exhibition through fragmented views of the museum and a fantasised audio guide.

Healing Routine est une situation. Le Musée international de la Croix-Rouge et du Croissant-Rouge a commandé à Cilins une nouvelle performance sur la question du soin à réaliser avec ses employés. Cilins a délégué cette commission à deux professionnels du soin, deux thérapeutes qui utilisent la danse pour guérir. Sur trois écrans, l'œuvre mêle les exercices de danse avec les anecdotes personnelles des participant.e.s. Healing Routine donne un visage à celles et ceux qu'on ne voit jamais en même temps qu'elle éclaire les aspects ethnocentrés, hétéronormés et coloniaux de l'exposition principale du musée par des vues elliptiques et un audioguide fantasmé.


Healing Routine (2022), video extract, 2'58
A short video introduction (FR/EN)
Short presentation on the museum’s website (EN)
A press article by Pascale Zimmermann Corpataux (FR)

An invitation and an exhibition by Elisa Rusca
Workshop by Suzanne Z’Graggen and Maroussia Ehrnrooth
Filmed by Julie Bellard and Alexander LarssonEditing Nicolas Cilins
participants Nicolas Cilins, Fabienne Mendoza, Pierre-Antoine Possa, Cecilia Suarez, Susanne Staub
Artistic advisor Yan Duyvendak
Thanks to Dominique Auvray, Alexandre Collet, Dustin Duong, Michael Helland, Pascal Hufschmid, Sofia Kouloukouri, Anja Lückenkemper, Arnold Pasquier, Johanna Viprey, and the whole administration and guide teams at the museum.
Support by the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum, and the Fonds Municipal d’Art Contemporain de la Ville de Genève.


Diva
Film, 29’
2022
Diva is a fan letter to Diva Cat Thy, a Vietnamese transwoman, street food vendor, and performer, who openly shares her life and struggles daily on social media. Trying to bridge distances of both geography and language, Nicolas Cilins uses found footage posted online by Diva and her community to get in touch with her. They have never met her, cannot travel to Vietnam due to COVID-19 restrictions, and relies on their boyfriend, an Australian of Vietnamese origins, who helps translate the footage and acts as an intermediary. In a conversation constructed through subtitles and surtitles, the film reveals the filmmaker’s and their partner’s process of understanding and making meaning of Diva’s life as well as their own in relation to it. Diva’s life becomes a reflection about queer identity, distance, intimacy, and incoherent histories.

Diva est une lettre d'admiration adressée à Diva Cat Thy, une femme transgenre vietnamienne, performeuse et vendeuse de nouilles dans les rues de Saigon, qui partage ouvertement sa vie et ses combats au quotidien sur les médias sociaux. Comme pour combler les distances géographiques et linguistiques, Nicolas Cilins utilise les archives mises en ligne par Diva et sa communauté pour entrer en contact avec elle. Il ne l'a jamais rencontrée, ne peut pas se rendre au Vietnam en raison des restrictions du COVID-19 et s'en remet à son petit ami, un Australien d'origine vietnamienne, qui l'aide à traduire et sert d'intermédiaire. Dans une conversation construite à l'aide de sous-titres et de surtitres, le film révèle le processus par lequel iel et son partenaire comprennent et donnent un sens à la vie de Diva, et à la leur. Diva est un moment éphémère dans la vie d'une femme, une réflexion sur l'identité queer, la distance, l'intimité et l’incohérence des histoires personnelles.


▶ Diva (2022), video extract, 3’
▶ Diva’s greetings to Berlinale audience, 2’

 Teddy Awards 2022, interview
Berlinale Meets... Forum Expanded | Films interested in language and translation
A podcast by Agathe Arnaud (FR)

A text by Giuseppe Di Salvatore (FR)
A text by Noemi Ehrat (DE)

With: Diva Cat Thy, Miss Tien Giang, Sim Let, Ngoc Huyen, Father Dragon, Hop Thu Thoai, Miss Tien’s husban, Nhu Y, Mr Tu Dat, Mr Trung
Translation: Dustin Duong
Editing: Nicolas Cilins
Sound mix: Philippe Ciompi
Artistic advisor: Yan Duyvendak
Special thanks to Dominique Auvray and Charlotte Terrapon
Supports: FCAC Fonds Cantonal d'Art Contemporain, République et canton de Genève, FMAC Fonds Municipal d'Art Contemporain de la Ville de Genève, Pro Helvetia, Swiss Arts Council.

Talk to me!
Digital durational performance: on-demand workers, monitor on stand, conference hardware and software
2021
On-demand workers from digital labour platforms Upwork, Fiverr, and People per hour have been hired to talk to visitors during the entire exhibition period in real-time. Academics call them ghost workers of platform capitalism, since they are rendered anonymous, providing invisible content and services to tech companies and A.I. development. In the installation, they are given a face and provided with a space to recount their own stories and experiences from their homes in Benin, Jamaica, Indonesia, and England. They are paid the same hourly rate regardless of the country they live in.

Des travailleurs à la demande recrutés sur des plateformes de travail en ligne comme Upwork, Fiverr et People per hour sont engagés pour parler aux visiteurs en temps réel pendant toute l'exposition. Ceux que les universitaires appellent parfois les travailleurs fantômes, ceux qui façonnent le contenu et les services pour les entreprises technologiques et autres intelligences artificielles parlent de leurs expériences depuis chez eux au Bénin, en Jamaique, en Indonésie ou en Angleterre. Ils sont payés au même taux horaire quelque soit le pays où ils vivent.


▶ Talk to me!, digital lecture @ Bern and Vienna Academies of Fine Arts, 2022, 78’

With the live participation of Justin Bartley (born in Jamaica 2003, works in Negril), Karen Cooper (born in UK 1968, works in Nottingham), Regina Houedanou (born in Benin 1985, works in Porto Novo), Radithya Febriani (born in Indonesia 1996, works in Jakarta)

Artistic advisor: Yan Duyvendak
Installation views: Guadalupe Ruiz, Swiss Art Awards 2021, Federal Office of Culture
Other pictures and documentation: Nicolas Cilins
Supports: FCAC Fonds Cantonal d'Art Contemporain, République et canton de Genève et FMAC Fonds Municipal d'Art Contemporain de la Ville de Genève


Conquest
Site-specific performance for eight performers, 50’
2021
Conquest is a site-specific performance designed for the Moscow Planetarium’s museum through conversations with its scientific and curatorial team. Those who are oftentimes rendered invisible by the museum’s gravitas were asked about their personal dreams and daily routines, triggering musings on the history of space conquest – what it has become and what it continues to represent for the country and its people –, faith, ideology, and the construction of a national identity. These testimonies were then embodied by eight visitors-turned-performers, capturing the ambiguous relation between the institution and its guests, as well as providing the ground for reflection on the role of the museum as a public and social space.

Conquest est une performance conçue pour le musée du planétarium de Moscou à partir d’entretiens avec ses scientifiques et conservateurs sur leurs désirs, routines et ambitions personnelles. Leurs témoignages mettent en lumière ce que la conquête spatiale continue de représenter — entre foi, idéologie et identité nationale. Ils sont lus et interprétés par huit performers recrutés parmi les visiteurs comme une invitation à une réflexion sur les liens entre institutions culturelles, vie sociale et politique.


Short presentation on Mir TV (RU)
Short presentation on the festival website (RU)


Photographs: Nicolas Cilins
With Maria Bolshakova, Alexandra Veselova, Tatiana Voronina, Iriną Gorodzyskaya, Natalia Grigoryeva, Marcela Akhmedova, Nikolaï Mamonov, Yuri Sorokin
Production: Theatrum 2021, Golden Mask Festival
Curator: Anton Fleurov
Production manager: Marina Kozlova
Assistant director: Julia Ryabova
A special thanks to Ponomarenko Marina Vladimirovna, Maksimov Igor Borisovich, Sukhobokova Elena Arkadyevna, Rubleva Faina Borisovna, Reznik Margarita Iosifovna, Yakunina Galina Valentinovna, Belous Irina Nikolaevna, Alexander Perkhnyak, and the whole team of the Moscow Planetarium.
Supports: the Vladimir Potanin Foundation and Pro Helvetia Moscow — Swiss Arts Council