The Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève is delighted to continue the Spoken Worlds program for its 10th year, in collaboration with Emmanuelle Pireyre, author and director of the writing workshop at HEAD – Genève.

The Spoken Worlds invites authors and artists who practice writing to present a reading/performance of their work, followed by a discussion. This year’s guiding thread is the passage from one language to another, since we all live through adventures with languages—mother tongues, foreign languages, learned or forgotten ones—that connect us deeply to our histories.

For this new event, the Centre welcomes Ed Wige and Valérie Niederoest who present the performance Travelling.

Deniz and Andrea are madly in love in Switzerland. Suddenly, a multitude of possibilities opens up: a job in China, dumplings, the drag experience… perhaps even a separation. Eager for freedom, the two protagonists must make choices. On stage, voice and music intertwine, alternate, and take turns, immersing the audience in a story where bodies entwine, stand apart, or confront each other. Ed Wige (text) collaborates with Valérie Niederoest (music) to create a performance at the crossroads of music and literature, based on an original text of the same name, published by Paulette Éditrice in 2025.

Ed Wige is a Swiss author-explorer. A member of various literary collectives such as Particules and AJAR, she has a particular fondness for multi-author writing, which gives rise to readings, performances, books, plays, or unidentified literary objects. Her first book, Milch Lait Latte Mleko (Paulette Éditrice, 2023), received a Swiss Literary Prize in 2024.

Valérie Niederoest is a singer, guitarist, and keyboardist. She spent 15 years with the band Meril Wubslin and is co-founder of the group Toboggan, with which she previously toured European stages. She has composed music for films by Emmanuelle Antille (Rollo) and Marina Rosset (La Fille aux feuilles). In parallel, she co-directs the cultural production company SALVE prod & tech.

This performance is supported by Fondation Givel.