Eric Hattan with Oliver Senn

Unplugged (The Köln Concert at Hotel Chelsea), 2024 

Five flat screens are suspended in the stairwell. The blending of sounds from the five screens forms a waterfall-like background noise. The video visible on the screens is the latest in the Unplugged series, produced in autumn 2024 at the Chelsea Hotel in Cologne, hence the nod to Keith Jarrett in the title. Eric Hattan has been working on this series since the 1990s. He returns packaging found in the cities he visits. Produced in hotel rooms, the videos feature a close-up of his hands gently turning the object inside out, along with the sound of this transformation. This repeated gesture also enables the artist to build up an archive of consumer habits and elements of visual design in different cities.

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Tour de S(i)on - or:Chasse s'eau, 2015/2025  

In collaboration with Oliver Senn

An aluminum barrel tower works like a water fountain, but on the principle of a toilet flush. A volume of water is automatically released at regular intervals. This creates a flow inside the six barrels, which become resonance boxes. As the water level drops, the sound diminishes to a murmur, then a trickle, until only a few discreet notes remain, before the cycle begins again.

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Für Passanten / for passers-by 2015/2025  

In collaboration with Oliver Senn 

Small, frenzied drum solos sound at irregular intervals and for only a few seconds, perhaps from the basement of the Power Station. Before a passer-by can even locate where they're coming from, they've already stopped. Oliver Senn has recorded nine very different drum solos in his rehearsal room, and the sound files are selected by a random generator. Both the sequence of the individual files and the length of the pauses between tracks are left to chance.

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Notes open for Interpretation / Interpreting Notes, 1996-1997

Leaf with text
Cut-out and collaged photographs

A series made up of very thin strips cut from photographs taken in a laboratory. These remnants, initially not intended for use, have been recovered and assembled into abstract collages. The whole is conceived as a suite of seven variations on the same material.

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Eric Hattan

Born 1955
Based in Basel

Since the 1980s, Eric Hattan has been questioning everyday objects, urban spaces and architecture, hijacking them with humor and irony. He often uses found objects to create his installations, videos and sculptures. His often ephemeral works rearrange clothes, furniture or screens to reveal the unexpected in the ordinary and challenge habitual perceptions. He is particularly interested in areas undergoing transformation, such as building sites or wastelands, which he explores to extract unexpected sculptural forms.

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Oliver Senn

Born 1962
Based in Aargau

As an architect, he worked for various Basel offices and carried out conversion projects on a freelance basis. For over twenty years, until 2001, he was also a drummer with various bands. On two occasions, he spent several years sailing the Atlantic together on a sailboat. Since 2010, he has led several artistic projects with Eric Hattan, combining architectural reflections, sculptural forms and spatiality explored through sound. These include Rien ne va plus - les jeux sont faits - faites vos jeux, along streetcar line 14 in Geneva, and Mitten in Pulheim, a temporary installation with drum sound in the suburbs of Cologne.