In their exhibition “You Ask Me To Not Give Up Up Up” at the Abbatiale de Bellelay in Switzerland, artist duo Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz present a striking roller coaster-shaped installation within a Baroque church. The wooden structure, topped with steel rails, navigates the site’s architectural constraints, winding between columns, passing through a narrow door, and soaring over the central altar. Its suspended loops subtly respond to the church’s vaulted features while evoking the atmosphere of an amusement park. The roller coaster’s form underscores the installation’s themes, blending adrenaline-fueled joy and fear to reflect contemporary afflictions and their historical origins.
A loudspeaker mounted on a cart travels along the rails, climbing slowly, pausing at peaks, and plunging rapidly downhill. These dynamic movements mirror recent political turbulence, aligning with Boudry/Lorenz’s focus on counter-narratives to challenges against gender, sexual orientation, and lifestyle freedoms. The loudspeaker plays a sound work created in collaboration with artist Colin Self, whose elegiac voice fills the church, amplified by echoes into a choral effect. This sonic experience evokes sadness, commemoration, and collective emotion, suggesting resilience amid emancipatory struggles.
Boudry/Lorenz, active since 2007, are known for video installations and sculptures exploring visibility and protest. Their work, featured at the 58th Venice Biennale and recent solo exhibitions, celebrates collective resistance and the enduring power of queer narratives.
The exhibition, curated by Sylvain Menétrey and Katia Leonelli, runs until August 31, 2025, and is open Wednesday to Sunday between 2 and 3 p.m. Outside of these hours, it is accessible in static form (11am – 6pm).
Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz: You Ask Me To Not Give Up Up Up / Abbatiale de Bellelay. Bellelay (Switzerland), July 24, 2025.
PS: Huge thanks to technician and artist Ivan Korshunov (ASAP-Studios, Basel) for the support with the drone footage inside the abbey and the point-of-view footage of the loudspeaker.
Exhibition text (excerpt):
For their exhibition You Ask Me To Not Give Up Up Up, the artist duo Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz created a vast installation in the shape of a roller coaster. The winding path followed by the wooden structure topped by steel rails skilfully plays with the obstacles posed by the site’s architecture, winding between the church’s columns, passing through a narrow door and rising to fly over the central alter. Its loops suspended in the air subtly trace a response to the vault and other features of the Baroque church. But plainly the roller coaster is meant to bring to mind not so much a sacred space as an amusement park. For these two artists this shape informs the content of their installation, where an adrenalin-driven mix of joy and fear evoke the afflictions of our time and their historical roots.
A loudspeaker mounted on a cart moves along the rails. It climbs laboriously uphill, hesitates for a moment at the top, and then plunges downward at a dizzying pace commanded by the force of gravity. These movements, with their abrupt turns and precipitous ups and downs, can’t help but recall recent political events. In their work, Pauline Boudry/Renate Lorenz always feature, whether directly or more abstractly, people, voices and historical events that offer a counter-narrative to the current assault on our freedom to choose our gender, sexual orientation and life style. Their installation’s highs and lows in fact reflect the progress and setbacks along the path of this emancipatory vision, especially now with the rise far-right politics.
Tossed about by these turbulences, the loudspeaker broadcasts a sound work composed by Pauline Boudry/Renate Lorenz in collaboration with the artist Colin Self. This partnership, which began last year during a residency at La Becque, in La Tour-de-Peilz, is typical of the duo’s practice, which most often involves working with queer performers. Colin Self’s voice makes the loudspeaker come alive, as if it were a person riding the roller coaster. The elegiac song fills the church’s solemn space with a sense of sadness and commemoration. The site’s powerful echoes multiply this singular voice and transforms it into a grand choir as many other voices merge, perhaps those of the people in the audience with their own surging emotions mingling with those of the past that haunt Bellelay. Swelling louder and louder with these persistent reverberations the song is transformed and takes on a life of its own, just as with every twist and turn the roller coaster car acquires a new kind of agency enabling it to deal with the vicissitudes of its path.
Far from sinking into the passive despair that often affects emancipatory movements after suffering defeats, this exhibition seeks to make us aware of history’s subtle upward spiral and the confidence that comes from the dauntless and irrepressible repetition of resistance. It also celebrates the pleasure of coming together and remaining together, of reliving the joy of speed and the thrills of crazy swerves and dizzying descents. This joy nourishes us and gives us superpowers so that we can act again and again, always ready to take a new turn.
The duo Pauline Boudry/Renate Lorenz, formed in 2007, is known for their video installations, sculptures and animated objects, which choreograph the tension between visibility and opacity, between silent protest and speaking up. They represented Switzerland at the 58th Venice Biennale with their work Moving Backwards. Other recent solo exhibitions include El Cristal Es Mi Piel at the Palacio Cristal / Reina Sofia, Madrid/Spain (2022-23), A Portrait at LEEUM Museum Seoul/Korea (2024) and All The Things She Said, Muac Museum Mexico City/Mexico (2025).
