Lausanne

Saturday the 5th of May.

Today we are heading for the town of Lausanne. Its a miserable day, the wind is blowing the rain is falling, we are running to the train station because we're running late. Six of us are going today, the three of us representing Baths pa, and the three Germans, Anne, Florian and Felix. We hop on the train, and it leaves exactly on time. We settle down for the two and half hour trip, I didn't think Switzerland was big enough to have such a train journey.
We dash through the countryside, through the gloomy weather through hills and mountains. There is an odd mist floating in patches everywhere, it gives the impression of great forest fires hissing in the rain. I take out my camera to immortalise the scene, it feels strangely light. Only then do I realise that in my joy of remembering to charge my camera battery, I have forgotten to put it back in my camera.
We are traveling today with purpose, we are going to see a gallelry, it celebrates a movement called 'Art Brut' or 'Outsider art'. This basically means rough art, or art outside the official norms of society. The majority of the artists we view are obsessive in nature, often detached from society or have experienced mental illness or traumatic upbringings. These people made art because they 'had to', they usually feature one theme, which is repeated until they died, much of the work was only discovered after their deaths. This work wasn't made for an audience or made to measure, in its purist form its an act of self expression with no other aim.
The largest collection they had was of a Russian deaf and mute man named Lobanov. Lobanov had an intensefixation with guns. Hundreds of his drawings feature fire arms, people hunting, in heoric positions, in type faces. He was often the centre of these images, he worked in collage too, staging elaborate facias, and cardboard guns painstakingly crafted in order to be photographed. After viewing 30 or 40 sketches you reach a saturation point and they begin to blur. Henry Darger was another prominent feature, he constructed an illustrated novel over three volumes and 50,000 pages. His work chronicled a race of strange children (all female), naked, some with Horns and tails, and their struggle aginast soldiers, cowboys and other adult male figures of aggression. Bizarre imagery using collage, copying, paint and pencils, over large formats. very intense and innocent/dark. There were perhaps 20 artists represented, all of them with a story and fascination, all a little sad but pure.
We also visited the Museum of deisgn and applied arts. They were hosting an exhibition celebrating Swiss design and innovation. From your typical Swiss army knife, Freitag bags, and time pieces to industrial design. It seems they hav eplayed a significant role in the evolution of most areas of design. The exhibition wasn't so big, but they had a great collection of design journals and a cute shop.
Laussane itself is a hilly town, everywhere we went was uphill and down dale, the architecture differed from Luzern and you could tell you were in aFrench speaking Kanton. We ran into a wine festival too, it featured all the kantons of Switzerland, Hirromi was able to get her face airbrushed (no, not all of it), after queueing up with the other children she asked for a small design for her check, she received a sizable shooting star in white pink and purple.
The shitty weather prevailed and we found ourselves dashing form shop to shop we took ina cafe and a bavarian pub before running for the last train home.
As we visit various institutes, we seem to gather an impressive collection of fliers and posters, here are some we picked up from Lausanne.