collectif_fact

collectif_fact is a Swiss duo formed by Annelore Schneider and Claude Piguet, active since the early 2000s. DDA Genève describes their current collaboration as centered on moving image and divided between London and Geneva^*1. In an earlier phase they worked as a trio with Swann Thommen; support from the City of Geneva in 2010 and a Swiss Art Award in 2011 were among the steps that accompanied their expansion into international exhibitions^*2. Wilde Gallery identifies the current duo as Schneider and Piguet and describes their work between London and Geneva ^*3. Goldsmiths records White Shadow and Dissonance as joint works by the two artists ^*4. Acme Studios documents their 2024 London residency and recent research into the production and consumption of digital images ^*5.

What connects collectif_fact’s early and recent work is an interest in the images used to know the city. Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève’s text on Worldmaking identifies urban planning and advertising on one side and Hollywood cinema on the other as two major fields informing the work^*2.Their current official biography describes a method that has expanded into 3D scanning, film dialogue, archival images, and sound editing, with the alienation and environmental costs of mass-producing and consuming digital images now part of the subject. The early question of how cities are seen continues into a more recent concern with what kinds of burdens the data and images used to construct cities place on the world^*6.

Treating the City as a Place Already Learned Through Images

The cities in Worldmaking can feel familiar even when the location itself is unknown. As Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève notes in citing urban planning, advertising, and Hollywood cinema, high-rise buildings, empty roads, elevated viewpoints, and particular kinds of lighting call up both lived urban experience and visual memories learned from film and advertising^*2. They bring cinematic codes into urban imagery because the contemporary eye is already trained by an accumulation of such images.

Editing Memories of Film, Advertising, and 3D Images to Produce “Realism”

Tenderpixel describes collectif_fact’s moving-image work as a weave of film dialogue, quotations, fragments of music, and references to film history^*7. Their official biography likewise describes a method of editing 3D scans, film dialogue, archival images, and sound into collages built from recognizable imagery^*6. Editing here does more than combine different media. The order of fragments and the layering of sound blur the boundary between existing and generated places, while the viewer’s own memory supplies the feeling that the scene is plausible.

A “Near Future” Built by Extending Present-Day Image Habits

In an interview with DDA Genève, the duo describes its videos as staging a “near future”^*8. They construct that near future by slightly exaggerating extensions of the present city, smartphone culture, servers, advertising, and CGI, which helps the images retain a sense of plausibility. HEAD Genève’s Narratives of a Near Future similarly framed the future across art and science in relation to present perception and action, sharing a set of concerns close to collectif_fact’s work^*9.

Worldmaking — Joining the Acts of Photographing and Constructing the City

In Worldmaking (2011), visual vocabularies from cities, advertising, and cinema were incorporated into film and photography^*2. The official project page records it as a major solo exhibition by collectif_fact^*10. As the title suggests, a world is produced through decisions about which images to select, how to sequence them, and what sounds to layer over them. Photography functions both as evidence of a city and as material for assembling another one.

White Shadow — Imagining 3D-Scan “Data” as a Pile of Things

White Shadow is a 10-minute, 40-second video made from existing 3D scans and sounds downloaded from online libraries^*11. The official text begins with the premise of what might happen if images of selfies, food, cars, and other subjects became physical objects that filled space. At the Swiss Art Awards, the video was shown with a series of twelve images, foregrounding photogrammetry and the materiality of digital images^*12. The work gives image excess a physical form, presenting it as a buildup of objects that obstruct the city. Chronus Art Center describes the piece as transforming flat images into enormous 3D objects and making the material and ecological costs of digital production visible ^*13.

CITYmulation / At a Loss for Words — Putting Cities and Conversations into Simulation

CITYmulation moves between fragments of existing cities and modeled spaces, inviting the city itself to be experienced as a simulation^*14. Documentation from Centre de la photographie Genève likewise places the project at the boundary between photography and moving image in its treatment of urban representation^*15. In At a Loss for Words, the mismatch between cinematic dialogue and image produces uncertainty in communication^*16. In Dissonance at Wilde Gallery, moving image, photography, silkscreen, and objects form a speculative scenario, extending their method of world-building through editing across the entire exhibition^*17. Swiss Cultural Fund describes At a Loss for Words as a video in which two people discussing a breakup try several modes of communication while cinematic codes are dismantled^*18.

Collaborative “Ping-Pong” Repeatedly Re-edits the Image of the World

In an interview with DDA Genève, the two describe their long collaboration as a form of “ping-pong”^*8. One artist may add sound or a quotation to an image made by the other, prompting another round of editorial decisions. Their method allows a world to emerge from the exchange of multiple materials and judgments instead of fixing the city from a single authorial viewpoint. That collaborative structure resonates with their broader idea that realism itself is built from shared memories of cinema, advertising, and digital images as well as from individual perception.

Photography Becomes Both Final Image and Material for Building 3D Worlds

A key feature of White Shadow is that photographs appear as finished flat images while also serving as input data from which photogrammetry generates three-dimensional models. The Swiss Art Awards identifies this technique and the materiality of digital imagery as central to the work^*12. The same body of work contains photographs that record a city from a chosen viewpoint and photographs made in large numbers around an object so that a calculable model can be built. Photography therefore extends from “an image of the city” to “material for calculating another image of the city,” turning the boundary of photography after the digital turn into part of the work.

Photography Circulates Through the Same Image Economy as Film, CGI, and 3D Data

In collectif_fact’s exhibitions, still photography, moving image, 3D models, sound, and text establish one another’s terms of viewing. Réseau Documents d’Artistes identifies the mass production of digital images and content, their ubiquity, their alienating effects, and their environmental impact as major concerns in the duo’s current work^*19. In White Shadow, 3D data circulating online is downloaded and fed back into the work, so the image becomes both an object of viewing and a reusable resource. The chain of image capture, circulation, re-editing, and storage comes within the scope of the work. collectif_fact’s participation in the Maison Européenne de la Photographie exhibition L’objet photographique in 2011 also shows how this work has been received within discussions of photographic materiality, apparatus, and support^*20.

Urban Reality Emerges from Edited Memory

Their urban images contain many recognizable elements—roads, buildings, signs, advertisements—while also producing a strong déjà vu reminiscent of film scenes or game environments. Kunsthaus Baselland described collectif_fact early on as a practice combining urban space with cinematic construction^*21. The work begins by asking why a particular view reads as a “future city” or an “ominous city” in the first place.

Photogrammetry Turns the Camera into a Device for Sampling Surfaces

The 3D scans used in White Shadow are connected to photogrammetry, which reconstructs an object’s three-dimensional form from numerous photographs. The Swiss Art Awards explicitly identifies this technology as an important production method in the work^*12. Instead of selecting one decisive viewpoint, the process samples many images around an object and constructs a model through computation. The camera becomes both a compositional tool and a sensor for generating 3D data.

Using Déjà Vu to Activate the Viewer’s Internal Image Archive

As Tenderpixel’s exhibition title Suspension of Disbelief suggests, the work actively uses the viewer’s learned willingness to enter fictional worlds^*7. DDA Genève similarly identifies the viewer’s desire to be drawn in and slightly deceived by images as an important element^*1. That feeling of being fooled depends on visual memories built through years of watching film, advertising, photography, and CGI.