HERESIES

In the collective imagination, “witch hunts” evoke the persecution of minority and marginalized groups. Few, however, are aware that their origins lie in trials for “crimes of heresy” held in the Alpine arc as early as the High Middle Ages. The Valais region was among the first to burn men and women accused of witchcraft, victims of rumor, hearsay, and suspicion. The trial records of Agnès Crittin, preserved in the archives of the Abbey of Saint-Maurice and dated 1457, together with the rare writings that recount her story, help us retrace the path of one condemned — from interrogation, to torture, to forced confession.

the project

Heresies is an artistic project rooted in a largely forgotten past. Linked by an invisible thread to history, it proposes a contemporary and ephemeral narrative that reawakens the imagination of the places it inhabits.

We focused on sites still visible today that were part of this history. Starting from these spaces and forgotten destinies, we sought to reactivate the term “heresy” — once used to mark a suspect or deviant practice, condemned as transgression — and to place it in our contemporary moment. From the outset, we asked ourselves about the social constructions that shape our identities. How do we define ourselves in relation to others? What do we admit, what do we conceal for fear of marginalization? Where can rumor still lead us? Who are today’s witches and sorcerers?

What begins here also ends here: these questions are passed on like sparks to those who encounter Heresies, in whatever trace it leaves behind.

Curation: Eléonore Varone

Coordination: Valmir Rexhepi

© Gentiane Kadrijaj

MARION GEISLER, JEAN-PHILIPPE GUILOIS, VOUIPE, AGNÈS CRITTIN AND OTHERS

Two dancer-choreographers, a musician, and a writer come together around the forgotten story of Agnès Crittin, judged and tortured for witchcraft in 1457.

The experience begins with words: Valmir Rexhepi wrote a literary novella, self-published and distributed for the occasion. Excerpts were read aloud on the path to Saint-Christophe, forming the first performance of the project, delivered by the author himself.

The journey then continues in Saint-Christophe, a clearing perched at 1,500 meters overlooking the Bagnes Valley. A wooden fence, a chapel, and a towering cross frame the site. Here, Vouipe invites the audience into a live sound performance, weaving together field recordings and electronic loops. Legend tells that Crittin once landed in this very spot, carried on an inverted chair from the ruined castle above, after a nocturnal feast with the devil.

From these heights, the audience descends to the Maison de l’Abbaye in Le Châble, where Crittin’s fate was sealed. Within the wooden walls of the barn and its garden, Marion Geisler and Jean-Philippe Guilois extend the narrative through dance. Their performance reactivates the body as a site of memory — the same body once subjected to incarceration and torture in this place where temporal and religious powers overlapped. Crittin’s case was one among many; although the final verdict has been lost, historians believe it unlikely she escaped the stake. Executions were public, staged to instill fear.

More than five centuries later, Heresies reopens this history, not to reenact it but to transform it. By combining movement, sound, and text, the project invites audiences to encounter what was once silenced — not as spectacle, but as a living language.

Graphic design: © ultrastudio

© Gentiane Kadrijaj