Roma Roma Roma

After a first flight in October 2023, artist Denis Savary and his team of Geneva-based pilots will once again activate the five Roma Roma Roma balloons in the patios of EPFL's Rolex Learning Center. This second flight will take place on 14 or 15 May (depending on the weather).

As last October, five tethered, remote-controlled balloons will be flying over the Rolex Learning Center at dusk. This set of ephemeral, nocturnal, illuminated sculptures calls into question scale and dimension, inscribing a verticality into the building's horizontality and revealing a marvellous enchantment.

Every year since 2011, the CDH-Culture has invited an artist to present a work in connection with the Rolex Learning Center. In 2023, Denis Savary will be developing his Roma Roma Roma project, commissioned by the City of Geneva in 2016 and shown in the Old Town in 2017. The patios of the Rolex Learning Center are now the ideal, unusual setting for activating these hot-air balloons.

During the performance, a film featuring the balloons will be made. It will be shown on the Campus in September 2024.

Roma Roma Roma is a sound sculpture. The propulsion of the gas and its combustion can be heard. A loud bellowing sound resonates in the patios, which become the work's sounding boards. The work breathes, like a large animal. It swells, making its swelling heard. This sound gives it organic overtones. Suddenly, we move beyond the notion of an object and envisage an organism, something living and animate that, although held on a leash - the ropes held in place by the pilots - possesses a certain autonomy, even freedom, in a body that moves, expands, shrinks and breathes. Roma Roma Roma is a sculpture of light. The fire of propane gas illuminates the inside of the balloons. Thanks to the semi-transparency of the fabric, the sculpture is at once luminous, illuminated and a source of light, like a gigantic street lamp hanging from the sky. This illumination dialogues and contrasts with the interior lighting of the building, which is lit with cooler lights. Thanks to its illuminating effect, the work reveals the architecture of the Rolex Learning Center in a different way.

Denis Savary (1981) is an artist based in Geneva. He studied at the ECAL where he teaches. He has exhibited at the Musée du Jeu de Paume and the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Mamco in Geneva, the Kunsthalle in Bern, the Swiss Institute in New York, the Printemps de Septembre in Toulouse and the Villa Médicis in Rome, among others. His work is inspired by pop culture, cartoons and art history. Denis Savary creates dreamlike, organic objects and images, often hybrids between the human, the machine and the animal. Imagination builds its kingdom.

• Roma Roma Roma
  Outside patios of the Rolex Learning Center
  Tuesday 14 or Wednesday 15 May (weather permitting) at 20:30
  Free entrance