Modern Nature - An Homage to Derek Jarman, part five

Initiated in 2019, Modern Nature aims to bring together works, discussions and performances as echoes of Derek Jarman's artistic work. This project, imagined as a tribute to the artist, to his garden at Prospect Garden and to his activism, guides the reflections that accompany the conception of this event.

Developed under the curatorship of Elise Lammer in 2019, the curatorial proposal has been conceived by Vanessa Cimorelli since 2023. Modern Nature includes the creation of a garden paying homage to Prospect Garden, composed of indigenous species and integrated into the wild meadows of La Becque. The garden hosts Swiss and international artistic interventions (performances and sculptures) designed for the site and related to Jarman's work, as well as film screenings and musical interventions. Responding to the main themes explored by La Becque, i.e. the links between nature, the environment and technology as seen through the prism of art, the project develops these thematic avenues by drawing on a particular place and a significant body of art, many aspects of which remain little-known in Switzerland.

For this fifth edition of Modern Nature, La Becque focuses this time on thinking about corporeality through water[1]. As his health deteriorated, Derek Jarman took refuge in Dungeness, where he returned to his first love: gardening and nature. Published between 1989 and 1990 under the title Modern Nature, Jarman's diary is a poetic account of his life. Describing his daily life from page to page, he tells the story of Prospect Cottage, a small fisherman's cottage built "eighty years ago by the sea"[2]. Facing the sun on a road that sparkles silver in the sea mist, Jarman recounts: "one stormy night many years ago, the waves broke right up to the front door, threatening to engulf it... but today, the sea has receded, leaving strips of pebbles"[3]. It is precisely on this terrain that the artist will shape his garden, a place of resistance for himself and his plants, but also a space that separates and paves the way to the shore.

[1] Neimanis, Astrida. Hydrofeminism: Or, on Becoming a Body of Water, 2012.
[2] Jarman, Derek. Modern Nature: The Journals of Derek Jarman, 1989 – 1990.
[3] Ibid.

Free admission, bar and food on site.