Le tissage du vivant
Dominique Bartels

In the Bernese Jura, open pastures, isolated farms and long-standing cheese-making traditions form a landscape where daily life is structured around attentive care for the herd. The gestures of shearing and milking—repeated season after season—reflect a rural economy grounded in proximity to animals and in the transmission of agricultural knowledge. Through her attentive gaze, Dominique Bartels reveals the complexity of these relationships, marked by care, attachment and the organisation of everyday life.

Today, sheep farming is no longer a major economic driver in the region. Instead, it persists as a fragile practice that contributes to the maintenance of the landscape and to the transmission of knowledge and skills. This shift from a productive economy to an economy of attention redefines the place of these gestures in the present. Wool and milk appear here as relational materials. Emerging from necessary gestures toward the animal, they become central elements in local food cultures and regional economies. Historically, the presence of sheep in the Bernese Jura dates back several centuries and has played an important role in shapingthe landscape and patterns of land use. This history continues to inform contemporary practices, balancing heritage and transformation. Dominique Bartels’ photographic investigation unfolds as a tool for observation and connection: between humans and animals, between agricultural practices and contemporary imaginaries, and between sensory experience and the production of knowledge.

Within the exhibition, the artist develops an expanded perspective that invites visitors to physically enter this agropastoral landscape. An immersive installation—including a film conceived for three screens—combines still images, moving sequences and soundscapes. The gaze no longer focuses on a single image but moves through space, encountering the simultaneity of gestures, bodies and territory. The project thus becomes a sensory environment in which the relationships between humans, animals and landscapes unfold through duration, repetition and embodied experience.

This work forms part of the 2ᵉ Enquête photographique Jura bernois (2024–2027), a collaboration between the Biel/Bienne Festival of Photography, Mémoires d’Ici and éditions Intervalles. Through this initiative, artists, institutions and local communities contribute to the creation of a contemporary visual memory of the region. By placing the sheep at the centre of the visual field, Dominique Bartels invites us to rethink our relationship with the living world, not only in terms of resources, but as a shared history of coexistence, interdependence and collective vulnerability.

The Bernese Jura thus becomes a space for reflection, where a profoundly contemporary question emerges: What does it mean today to live with the living and how can we care for it?

Co-curator: Sarah Girard

Winning project of the 2nd Enquête photographique Jura bernois.
The 2nd Enquête photographique Jura bernois 2024–2027 is a collaboration between the Biel/Bienne Festival of Photography, Editions Intervalles, the Mémoires d’Ici foundation and the Bernese Jura Council.

Discover the interview of Dominic Bartels, recorded in 2025: Interview

Year of production: 2024–2026