The Centre de la photographie Genève is looking forward to hosting the biennal PIPAS — Photographie et Image Pour l’Apprentissage Scolaire [Photography and Image for School Learning] – the first Swiss photography biennial designed by, for, and with students. Under the theme Photo-narrative, it invites several groups from different school degrees to discover and experiment with the skills linked to the production of a biennial: conceptualisation, installation, curating, and events. The Centre de la photographie Genève is proud to contribute to this project with its knowledge and expertise.

PIPAS is putting the image at the heart of school learning. In a world where images are becoming increasingly dematerialised, PIPAS offers young people the opportunity to assess agency over the processes of creating and disseminating photographs in order to understand their complexity and impact. Thinking, anticipating, questioning, contextualising, trying, producing, sharing: through practical learning, this event encourages the acquisition of knowledge and know-how in an autonomous, tangible and reflective way. Organised by the service “écoles-médias” of the Département de l’instruction publique, de la formation et de la jeunesse (DIP), the Freeze Association and the Service enseignement et évaluation (SEE) of the Direction générale de l’enseignement obligatoire, PIPAS is the first photography event in Switzerland organised by students from obligatory (EP, SEC I) to post-obligatory education. The conception and realisation of the images, as well as the exhibition design and the communication to the public have been entrusted to them.

With the theme Photo-narrative, chosen for this first biennial, the students and their teachers have been invited to make visible and understandable the relationships between texts and images in order to develop new narratives, new aesthetics, and new focuses of attention (in areas linked to pedagogy, art, and social and environmental issues). Their productions cover a wide range of media, from performance to sculpture, photo novels, dazibao, jewellery creation, and fictionalized portraits. They will be exhibited for 10 days in the eco-district Jonction, in partnership with several artistic and cultural institutions, including the Centre de la photographie Genève (CPG), the Fonds d’art contemporain de la Ville de Genève (FMAC), and the Fonds cantonal d’art contemporain (FCAC).