Jules Spinatsch has already shown his first panoramic work at the Centre de la photographie Genève in 2003. Temporary Discomfort – Chapter IV PULVER GUT was a view of snow-covered Davos, packed with fences, gates and all sorts of anti-riot devices, during a ten-day period. By hacking the webcams that were supposed to display skiing conditions, the photographer succeeded in showing how an alpine village can turn into a high-security place under siege. Since then, Jules Spinatsch has applied his system of methodical scanning of a given place to other situations, whether during a qualification football game for the World Cup 2006 between Switzerland and France, or the meeting of Toulouse city council on 30th June 2006. The artist’s practice is double-edged indeed. While we are fascinated by the huge amount of information available to us, including the tiniest details that can be seen in large-scale blow-ups – such as the hand-written message left on a deputy’s desk, which gave the work its title Fabre n’est pas venu (Fabre didn’t turn up), the technique that Spinatsch uses can also turn into a fearsome, all-controlling weapon. There is a fine line between the panorama and the Panopticum.

Jules Spinatsch is known for his framing method, employing first a webcam, then an SLR camera. He sets the timing of the shots and the field covered by the camera, sometimes covering 360°. The CPG was the first institution to show his Semiautomatic Photography in 2003. That body of work was subsequently displayed at some of the leading museums and biennial exhibits, from the MoMA in New York to the Tate Modern in London, by way of the Fotomuseum Winterthur and the Kunsthaus Zürich.The CPG showed a retrospective of these pieces in 2018–2019 and has just published a book under the same title. Super Meta Eclat consists again of semiautomatic photography, but without the panoramic aspect.The camera here was pointed at a volcanically erupting hot spring in Iceland. This showing in OSMOSCOSMOSis a first, while also representing the CPG’s sixth collaboration with the artist. The video projection of this work creates a permanent flow of impressions that become superimposed, oscillating between abstraction and representation with a meditative effect.

10 collaborations took place until today between Jules Spinatsch and CPG.