Fragile Warning Lights by Swiss artist Anna Katharina Scheidegger

PICTO LAB / Experimenting with images: Anna Katharina Scheidegger, Laureate 2025

Fragile Warning Lights

Our 2025 laureate of the PICTO LAB / Experimenting with Images residency will present the work of Swiss artist Anna Katharina Scheidegger at the A ppr oc he Fair from November 13 to 16.

She will showcase her project FRAGILE WARNING LIGHTS, which explores marine phytoplankton — the “lungs of the planet” that produce the oxygen we breathe, but whose populations have declined by 40% since the 1950s.

Through a dialogue with printer Fred Jourda, at the heart of the @pictofr laboratory, Anna Katharina explains her visual research on these microorganisms, her creative process, and her reflections on the materiality of her project.

FRAGILE WARNING LIGHTS is a photographic study of the characteristics of phytoplankton with bioluminescence (in particular Dinophytes, also known as Dinoflagellates). Bioluminescence is the emission of light by living organisms, resulting from a chemical reaction that converts chemical energy into visible light. To create the images for FRAGILE WARNING LIGHTS, Anne Katharina Scheidegger uses photography in the etymological sense of the term: she writes with light.

The photogram technique (one of the most direct processes in photography, perfected in particular by Man Ray) involves placing an object on a photosensitive surface. After exposure, the object remains visible in the form of a luminous trace.
By placing bioluminescent plankton on a film base, the film is exposed solely by the light emitted by the plankton. The instantaneous flashes of light and the agitation of the plankton are thus fixed in an image which, by recording the movement, captures the gradations and visually creates depth.

I’d also like to experiment with film shots, which allow me to enlarge the images. Through this enlargement, the excessively small size of the plankton offers another reading: the images relate to the infinitely large.
However, the aim of this work is not to document the catastrophe, but to show the beauty of these declining micro-organisms. The interpretation of the impact of global warming on plankton is made through the bioluminescence, emitted under the effect of stress, as a matter of course.

Anna Katharina Scheidegger’s application is sponsored by Beatrice Brunner Gallery in Bern, Switzerland.

https://www.annakatharina.org
https://www.instagram.com/scheideggerannakatharina