The Archipel Festival

International Sound Art Festival

For the past 20 years Archipel promotes the creation of contemporary music as well as all forms of musical research and sound art. Discover its rich, eclectic and completely out-of-the-ordinary program of concerts, instrumental and vocal music, performances, improvised and electroacoustic music, sound installations, listening sessions, meetings and conferences. Workshops are also open to children and families.

All audiences

Differents Venues  | 1 to 10 April

©  The Archipel Festival 

© GTG

Sleepless

Ballad opera by Peter Eötvös

One of the greatest living composers, Hungarian Peter Eötvös has more than ten operas under his belt. For his latest operatic work, co-commissioned by the Berlin Staatsoper Unter der Linden and the Grand Théâtre de Genève, the conductor and composer tackles the prose of Norwegian Jon Fosse. In his trilogy, this writer of liquid and singing poetry dissects the psyche of Alida and Asle, a young couple on the run from the world. In Jon Fosse’s symbolic fjords of light and despair, water swallows everything, the rain, the sea, life and death. Sleepless will be conducted by Peter Eötvös in person at the head of the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande.

Ages 16+

Grand Théâtre de Genève | 2, 3 & 5 April
Sung in English with French and English subtitles

© Bravery in Battle

The House We Live In
 

Film by Bravery in Battle, followed by a concert by Jean-Noël Gos

From their video-concert, a true immersive sensory experience, this film invites us to reinvent a new mythology of our link to the world, through the musicalised testimonies of personalities who think about the world through different prisms such as Hubert Reeves, Vandana Shiva, Bill McKibben, Jean Claude Ameisen, Mélanie Laurent...

Ages 12+

MACO - 87 Chemin des Sports | 2 April - 6:30PM

© MEG

Uprooted - Borneo The Lost Forest

Sunday Movie x Festival du Film Vert Genève
 

As part of the "Meetings for reflection and action" on care, repair and sustainability, MEG and the Festival du film vert are joining forces to offer you a unique meeting and screening. Faced with massive deforestation, the Borneo Dayak-Bahau people have decided to send three emissaries to track down the felled trees. Palm oil producers and large timber companies are clearing one of the world's largest tropical forests without limit. The screening will be preceded by a discussion with Alice Matthew, an indigenous representative from the Dusun community in Borneo. Consecutive English/French interpretation will be available to the audience.

Ages 14+

Geneva Museum of Ethnography - MEG | 3 April - 4PM

© Kai Binert 

Peter Eötvös @Archipel Festival

Concert with OSR, Contrechamps & HEM

Well-known Hungarian composer Peter Eötvös will conduct the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande (OSR), Ensemble Contrechamps and the orchestra of the Geneva University of Music (HEM) in this great first encounter. Presenting three of Peter Eötvös’ pieces for the first time in Switzerland as well as a classic from the repertoire of Polish composer Lutosławski, this Archipel Festival “hors-les-murs” concert will take place at Victoria Hall.

Ages 16+

Victoria Hall | 6 April - 6:30PM

© One Earth 

One Earth - Everything is connected

Film by Francesco de Augustinis

From China to the laboratories of the 'food silicon valley' in the Netherlands, to the disputed lands of indigenous peoples in Brazil: One Earth tells stories that are seemingly far apart, revealing how everything is connected in a complex system that rests on a fragile balance. This screening is part of the Festival du Film Vert and will be followed by a debate (in french) with:
- René Longet, Festival co-sponsor and sustainability expert
- Rachel Barbara Häubi, climate journalist at Heidi News
- Mathias Schlegel , Spokesperson Greenpeace Switzerland

Ages 16+

The Grütli Cinemas | 7 April - 8PM
In English and Italian

© Julian Mommert

Transverse Orientation
 

Dance, directed by Dimitris Papaioannou

Greek stage prodigy Dimitris Papaioannou describes himself as a “painter in the theatre”. The aesthete enhances his pictorial visions with the extra life that the stage brings to them. His new creation, Transverse Orientation, promises to be a moment of pure grace and delicacy, featuring hybrid creatures, mythological apparitions, a fantastic beast, and mystical epiphanies, each more subjugating than the last. Their beauty is revealed in the crackling of their own combustion.

Ages 18+

Comédie de Genève | 8 - 10 April 

© Gordon Monahan

Gordon Monahan @Archipel Festival

Speaker swinging

Speaker Swinging is an intense collective experience, as much from the point of view of sound as in the physical effort required to carry it out. Loudspeakers are set in motion by three performers. The perception of the emerging sounds is constantly modified, based on an acoustic principle called the Doppler effect. The resulting phenomena of phase, vibrato and tremolo draw us into a throbbing whirlpool. The loudspeaker is no longer only a tool for sound diffusion: turned into a whirling rhombus, it becomes an instrument in itself.

Ages 14+ 

La Maison Communale de Plainpalais | 10 April

© Natural History Museum (MHN)

Where is the monster?

Art meets biology: temporary exhibition by University of Geneva, MHN & Ariana Museums

What if we were all monsters? The exhibition questions the boundaries between the monstrous and the natural through a journey between art and science. It explores how nature makes - and continues to make - the diversity of living forms that we know today. While sculptor Jean Fontaine expresses his concern about the destructive technical progress that threatens living beings and the natural order, his chimerical creatures dialogue with the work of researchers from the University of Geneva.

Ages 8+

University of Geneva, Carl Vogt | Until 13 April
Natural History Museum - MHN | Until 22 May
Ariana Museum | Until 22 May

© Iva Kostadinova

The Cat by Philippe Geluck

Bronze sculptures outdoors exhibition

 

You can stroll along the lake and admire 2 meters high “Le Chat” bronze sculptures by Philippe Geluck. Some are engaged for the environment, others are funny, all 20 statues are monumental, intriguing and entertaining for all ages to admire on the quai Wilson.

All audiences

Quais on the right bank | Until 20 April

© DR

Francesco Piemontesi
 

The Great Performers: piano recital
 

Francesco Piemontesi is a pianist of exceptional refinement of expression, which is allied to a consummate technical skill. Widely renowned for his interpretation of Mozart and the early Romantic repertoire, Piemontesi’s pianism and sensibility has a close affinity too with the later 19th century and 20th century repertoire. For this Great Performers rendez-vous in Geneva, he will delight us with Brahms, Dubussy and Rachmaninov. Of one of his great teachers and mentors, Alfred Brendel, Piemontesi says that Brendel taught him “to love the detail of things.”

Ages 16+

Victoria Hall | 25 April 2022 - 8PM

© Barry Ace

waawiindmawaa by Anishinaabe Odawa artist Barry Ace

Co-creative performance and temporary exhibition

How can indigenous beadworks create a contemporary visual and mnemonic treaty agreement? MEG invites us to discover Anishinaabe artist Barry Ace’s creative performance, whereby she will combine her indigenous tribe’s beadwork to the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Issue. This workshop is presented in collaboration with the NONAM – Nordamerika Native Museum in Zurich.The artist will engage and work together with 23 participants in Zurich and 23 participants in Geneva.

Ages 16+

Museum of Ethnography - MEG | 27 & 28 April

© Annick Wetter - MAMCO

&

Temporary exhibition, John M Armleder & friends

Conceived by John M Armleder, this exhibition stages collaborations of a sort: co-created paintings and sculptures, works derived of protocols or whose fabrication was delegated to others, projects inspired by — or created in homage to — other artists, etc. The exhibition’s title (the ampersand being a ligature of the letters ‘e’ and ‘t’, from the Latin word ‘et’) refers to collaborative methods that erode the meaning of the artist’s signature and slyly undermine assumptions of authorship.

All audiences

MAMCO | Until 19 June

© Sylvain Leguy

Alexandre Joly

Communicating Vessels, temporary exhibition

The shape of vases is often associated with the human body - belly, neck, lip or heel - but it is their inner breath that Alexandre Joly has captured here to celebrate its resonance. Among the 2990 examples found in the collections of the Musée Ariana, the young French visual artist has selected some showpieces from the East and used mirror effects to augment their presence. Through this visual and audio “mise en abyme”, each object becomes a vessel to be boarded, inviting us on a journey into infinite spaces.

Ages 14+

Ariana Museum | Until 7 August