Summary:

Heidi Bucher was a Swiss artist born in 1926. At the end of the 70’s she made what she called the « skinning » of rooms. She casted walls of abandoned buildings with textiles soaked in liquid latex. And just before it dried hard, she would peel off this “skin”, removing the almost dried material. The action results in a negative architecture with ghostly essence. In 1988 she made one of this performance in an ancient mansion which used to be the Bellevue Sanatorium, located in Kreuzlingen, famous for the alienists who created it, as Ludwig Binswanger (grandson of the founder and contemporary of Freud), and their wealthy patients. In her performance, Heidi Bucher seems to catch layers of memories embedded in those walls. What comes from her action is the unconsciousness made visible, along with a history of psychiatry; as if her work was a writing machine that viewers have to unlock.

Key words: Architecture | performance | skinning | Magic block pad | memory