line of sight

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With ligne de mire, mudac focuses on the world of fire­arms, examin­ing it through the lens of design and contem­por­ary creation. The first exhib­i­tion of its kind in Switzer­land, it addresses in a crit­ical and targeted way our para­dox­ical rela­tion­ship with these ambigu­ous objects that are both fascin­at­ing and repuls­ive, visceral and murder­ous.

As a design museum, mudac regu­larly features theme-based exhib­i­tions focus­ing on social issues, some of which may be sens­it­ive. Thus, several exhib­i­tions so far have aimed to appeal to, surprise and espe­cially stim­u­late audi­ences. These include Cache-cache camou­flage (2002), Would You Like A Bag with That? Plastic bags in art and design (2013), Nirvana—Strange forms of pleas­ure (2015) and Safe and Sound—Surveil­lance and Protec­tion in the 21^st Century (2016). The ligne de mire project—the result of two years of research and broad collab­or­a­tion—shares the same object­ives.

The role of the designer is cent­ral in the very design of the fire­arm, and the func­tion­al­ity of the design is very specific.  Indeed, a fire­arm is above all a means to an end: Its aim is to neut­ral­ise someone as effi­ciently as possible and it must be reli­able, compact, light, flex­ible, durable, at times aesthetic, and increas­ingly intel­li­gent. Over more than two years of research, the issue of lethal design has come up against the silence of the arms industry: Beyond the secrecy that surrounds new tech­no­logy, commu­nic­at­ing on the devel­op­ments of the func­tion­al­ity of a fire­arm hardly seems accept­able for produ­cers. More gener­ally, mention­ing the connec­tion between design and viol­ence remains mostly taboo. Other fields are better suited in terms of commu­nic­a­tion: Issues such as ecology, social inter­ac­tion or the manage­ment of Big Data are indeed easier to promote than for example, the devel­op­ment of an arti­fi­cially intel­li­gent fire­arm capable of find­ing its target thanks to facial recog­ni­tion soft­ware, and to decide completely inde­pend­ently to shoot.

Never­the­less, the conclu­sion is clear: Fire­arms are a highly emotional topic. Few objects stir up such contrast­ing feel­ings, from deep loath­ing to morbid fascin­a­tion – an appre­hen­sion that is often specific to the sociocul­tural context in which we have grown up. However, whatever our stance, fire­arms colon­ise our daily life and collect­ive psyche through count­less images and repres­ent­a­tions, whether in the media, in films or in the objects that surround us. In turn, it is a weapon of war, a mech­an­ism of indi­vidual or collect­ive aggres­sion, a symbol of power and viol­ence, an object of large-scale traf­fick­ing, a product of informal econom­ies and even a decor­at­ive item. An icon­o­graphic motif, the fire­arm acts as a reminder of our ephem­eral exist­ence and frailty.

The exhib­i­tion is organ­ised in several sections, each with a chapter head­ing that refers specific­ally to the semantic field of fire­arms, from artists’ and design­ers’ rein­ter­pret­a­tion of the legendary AK-47 (Kalash­nikov) to works that recycle vari­ous constitu­ent parts of fire­arms in unex­pec­ted, spec­tac­u­lar and commit­ted ways. Play­ing on mater­i­als, shapes and genres, line of sight reflects on this major and complex soci­etal fact. To comple­ment the exhib­i­tion, a bilin­gual brochure given to the visit­ors will provide inform­a­tion to contex­tu­al­ise each work.

The exhib­i­tion ends with a docu­ment­a­tion room designed in asso­ci­ation with Small Arms Survey, an NGO based in Geneva which collects data at inter­na­tional level on the circu­la­tion of light weapons and armed viol­ence.

The sceno­graphy was designed by Lausanne-based archi­tects T-Rex & Cute Cut, and the graphic design is the work of ECAL teacher Aurèle Sack. A richly illus­trated bilin­gual cata­logue (French/English), includ­ing texts by researcher, anthro­po­lo­gist, art histor­ian and scient­ist, will be published on the occa­sion of the exhib­i­tion.

Design­ers et artistes

Michel Aubry, Mircea Cantor, Kyle Cassidy, Yi-Fei Chen, Johanna Dahm, ECAL/Ecole cantonale d’art de Lausanne, Al Farrow, Sylvie Fleury, Para­stou Forouhar, Susan Graham, Clara Ianni, An-Sofie Kesteleyn, Herlinde Koelbl, Claire Lieber­man, Robert Longo, Gonçalo Mabunda, Raul Martinez, Jennifer Meridian, Post­ler­Fer­guson, Ted Noten, Mary O’Mal­ley, Mai-Thu Perret, The Propeller Group, Anto­nio Riello, Edwin Sanc­hez, Lisa Sartorio, Phil­ippe Starck, Sharif Waked, Brigitte Zieger, Ralph Ziman

Recom­men­ded age : 12 years old