Using eco-somatic practices, the toolbox of Tamalpa (Anna Halprin) and the principles of permaculture to develop movement scores, they will focus during the residence in Vitlycke on how to dialogue with those who are absent in our lives. In particular, we will explore the legacy of Ernesto Oeschger, who has been a friend and mentor of Gregory Stauffer:

What is the origin of art? This question has inspired my friend, the sculptor and goldsmith Ernesto Oeschger, since his childhood. More precisely, since he saw reproductions of paintings from the Chauvet Cave in a bookshop window in Basel, which transported him on a journey through time to the origins of creative expression.

As a child, Ernesto did not have the money to buy the book and made his life. As an adult he visited archaeological sites around the world teaching himself archaeology. We met when he was about seventy years old in the village of Intragna. He showed me the rubbings of rock carvings he was making, some of which were over 2 metres by 1.5 metres in size. I became his assistant for the conservation and eventual transfer of these works to the Archaeological Museum of Aosta.

In the winter of 2021, I conducted an interview with Ernesto to record the stories I had heard during so many evenings spent together: his travels, his hypotheses about life and unconsciousness and his passion for the origins of art, the need to communicate and connect worlds. Shortly afterwards, Ernesto died at the age of ninety, and his ashes were scattered in the Meleza River.

The week-long residency at the Vitlycke Museum will be an opportunity to listen to his audio recordings again, visit the rock carving site with the curators, and transpose the weaving of these memories into a somatic and performative medium.`

At the end of the residence on Saturday 13th June, we propose organizing a public event to share our practices through a guided performative walk. The walk will begin at Vitlycke Museum, continue past the rock carving sites, and conclude at Vitlycke Centre for Performing Arts with snacks and an informal talk.

*Greogory Stauffers participation in the residency is supported by La Manufacture, Haute école des arts de la scène – HES-SO Lausanne.

Bio

Guy Cools is a Belgian dance dramaturg. He worked amongst others with Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui (BE), Danièle Desnoyers (CA), Christopher House (CAN), Akram Khan (UK), Andrea Nann (CAN) (www.guycools.com). With the Canadian choreographer, Lin Snelling, he developed an improvised performance practice Rewriting Distance (www.rewritingdistance.com). His most recent publications include In-between Dance Cultures: on the migratory artistic identity of Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Akram Khan (2015); Imaginative Bodies, dialogues in performance practices (2016); and Performing Mourning. Laments in Contemporary Art (2021).

From December 2022, he is full time professor in the dance department of UQAM, Montréal.

Gregory Stauffer is a performer, choreographer and researcher. His work is inspired by the practices and ethics of ecological gardening. A graduate of the Accademia Dimitri, he founded the company Le cabinet de curiosités in Geneva in 2009 and creates site-specific works. He was an artist-in-residence at Arsenic in Lausanne from 2018 to 2020, where he established the ongoing platform Tuesday is Danceday. Between 2021 and 2022, he led the forest-based research-creation projectSustainable Creative Processes in the Performing Arts, and from 2024 to 2026, Les 4 Jardins. He received the Liechti Foundation Arts Prize in 2022. In 2024, he founded Malvaux – a centre for ecosomatic exploration in the forest – with choreographer Eve Chariatte. Since January 2026, he has been head of the Master’s programme at La Manufacture, the University of the Arts in Lausanne.