Clone of Roundtables: Artists’ experience of a Biennale

With Suzan Noesen, Karolina Markiewicz, and Laura Lux

VENUE: Casino Luxembourg

A joint initiative by Mudam and Casino Luxembourg, RoundTables

is a series of pitch presentations and conversations dedicated to the Luxembourg art scene. At the heart of this collaboration, a simple idea: is the idea of gathering around the table to share and discuss. The project aims to facilitate exchanges between artists, curators, and the public in an informal setting.

Each session focuses on one topic and invites guest speakers and team members from both institutions to respond to the question at hand. Following these pitch presentations, the discussion opens to the public in an informal format, encouraging active participation. Attendees are invited to pose their own questions, engage with the topic, and offer different perspectives, creating a space for meaningful exchange and the emergence of networks within the Luxembourg art community.

Session 2: Artists or Filmmakers: the moving image in between space

This second session will be held as part of the Lux Film Fest (Luxembourg City Film Festival) and will open the debate on the porous boundaries between contemporary art and cinema, from both an institutional and artistic perspective. What does it mean to present a film in an exhibition space? What are the specificities of these two fields in terms of support and production? What are the benefits of navigating between the fields of contemporary art and film, as some artists and filmmakers do?

Biographies:

Suzan Noesen (1985) is a Dutch-Luxembourgish artist and filmmaker working between Montréal, Canada and Septfontaines, Luxembourg. She studied Fine Arts with a focus on performance and interdisciplinary practices at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague (KABK), painting and drawing at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst in Leipzig (HGB) and followed training in physical theatre at Theaterschool Amsterdam. She also spent a two-year residency at the Ecovillage “Sieben Linden”, where she researched different community communication and decision-making techniques. In 2017 she starts a cohabitation with her grandmother in rural Luxembourg and begins to work as a film director in addition to her visual art work. In 2019, her first short film Book of Hours, a fictionalized portrait of this cohabitation, premiered at the 9th Luxfilmfest at Ciné Utopia and received an Honorable Mention at the NEXXT Competition of the 16th FEST New Directors | New Films Festival. The film was also in exhibition at Casino Luxembourg – Forum d’art Contemporain. Suzan Noesen was the laureate of the Bourse Francis André in 2018 and shortlisted artist for the LEAP prize in 2020. She has been artist in residence at Fonderie Darling, Montréal (QC, CA) in 2022.

Biographies:

Suzan Noesen (1985) is a Dutch-Luxembourgish artist and filmmaker working between Montréal, Canada and Septfontaines, Luxembourg. She studied Fine Arts with a focus on performance and interdisciplinary practices at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague (KABK), painting and drawing at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst in Leipzig (HGB) and followed training in physical theatre at Theaterschool Amsterdam. She also spent a two-year residency at the Ecovillage “Sieben Linden”, where she researched different community communication and decision-making techniques. In 2017 she starts a cohabitation with her grandmother in rural Luxembourg and begins to work as a film director in addition to her visual art work. In 2019, her first short film Book of Hours, a fictionalized portrait of this cohabitation, premiered at the 9th Luxfilmfest at Ciné Utopia and received an Honorable Mention at the NEXXT Competition of the 16th FEST New Directors | New Films Festival. The film was also in exhibition at Casino Luxembourg – Forum d’art Contemporain. Suzan Noesen was the laureate of the Bourse Francis André in 2018 and shortlisted artist for the LEAP prize in 2020. She has been artist in residence at Fonderie Darling, Montréal (QC, CA) in 2022.

Karolina Markiewicz was born 1976 in Luxembourg and studied political science, philosophy and theatre and works as a writer, director, and teacher. In her directing work, she operates both independently and collaboratively, notably with Romeo Castellucci, Silvia Costa, Yuko Kominami, Kevin Muhlen, Ásta Sigurdardottir, Tamiko Thiel, and Pascal Piron, with whom they directed documentaries such as Les Formidables (2014), and Mos Stellarium (2015).

Markiewicz’s films and installations have been selected for various festivals, including the Venice Film Festival. a series of short films entitled Side-Effects of Reality, were shown in a solo exhibition at Casino Luxembourg – Forum d’art contemporain in Luxembourg (2016), at Rencontres Internationales in Paris (2017) and Argos Centre for Art and Media in Brussels (2017). Their most recent work includes The Living Wintesses (2020). She regularly writes for the weekly d’Lëtzebuerger Land, as well as for journals such as Mouvement or Aware, and for the magazine Salzinsel, which she founded and directed. She was director at QG Salzinsel art gallery, and is the initiator of Kulturstruktur Video Talks. She is a member of AICA for which she curated of various exhibitions, and serves on the board of the National Theatre of Luxembourg.

Laura Lux. is an independent researcher in film studies with a practice in film programming. She completed her PhD at King’s College London in 2023. Her doctoral research examined how the German essay filmmaker Harun Farocki engaged with the media debates and practices of the West German student movement in his early filmmaking. Beyond her thesis, she has also written on the filmmaker pair Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet. Between 2018 and 2023, she has held positions as a researcher and conference organiser for the GSSN project Circulating Cinema and taught film studies at undergraduate level. Her work has been presented at the Institute of Modern Languages Research and conferences including BAFTSS and Visible Evidence. Building on her research in experimental film, she has since worked as a programmer and curator. In 2024, she curated the experimental film exhibition Images at Work at Casino Luxembourg and a sister screening at the Cinémathèque in Luxembourg.

RoundTables logo by Olivier