The film ‘Alreadymade’ (2023), which forms the basis for Visser’s site-specific installation, is an alternative whodunnit that explores the boundaries between genuine and fake. ‘Fountain’ is the starting point of the artist and film-maker’s investigation into the speculation surrounding Duchamp’s authorship. Adopting the readymade approach, she produces the work from existing material: found film footage from which she creates her own moving images, employing new technologies such as motion capture and meta-human modelling. The result is not an art-historical documentation; rather, the mix of existing and newly created material serves as a reflection on such fundamental questions as ‘what is reality, and what is fake?’ Who is the author? What is an original and what is a copy?

Barbara Visser is a visual conceptual artist, director and documentary film-maker. Born in the Netherlands, she studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy Amsterdam and the Van Eyck Academie in Maastricht. Most of her projects, which take the form of photographs, films, prints, texts or performances, investigate the uncertain relationship between registration and dramatization, play with notions of original and copy, and explore the ways in which history and memory are shaped by the individual and society. Visser’s works have been shown at film festivals and exhibitions around the world. She currently heads the ‘F for Fact’ master’s programme at the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam. ‘Alreadymade’ is the artist’s first solo exhibition at an art museum in Switzerland.

Supported by the Ernst and Olga Gubler-Hablützel Foundation and Mondriaan Fonds.