Grass Grinder Groove - Rachel Morend

May 2023, sound installation, Espace Arlaud, Lausanne

October 2024, sound installation, La Grenette de la Ferme-Asile, Sion

September 2025, sound installation, La Foire du Valais, Martigny

Grass Grinder Groove, 2023

Rachel Morend drives tractors, tinkers with sounds, rubs shoulders with cows, diverts machines and is part of a collective with an unpronounceable name. For the PlattForm23 exhibition, it presents a new interactive sound installation.

Turn the crank and let yourself be transported to the Swiss countryside! Thanks to the MEUH boxes attached to the mechanisms of an old plant shredder, it is a whole herd of cows that suddenly invades the sound space and parasitizes exposure. The Espace Arlaud groove space to the rhythm of a curious animal bluegrass, and the climb of the monumental staircase takes on the appearance of transhumance. The manual activation of this 100% mechanical device leaves the field free to experiment and creates a special listening situation.

In a remarkable ecology of means and by a squeaky shift, Rachel Morend offers a playful and interactive installation that recycles an agricultural machine into a barrel organ with country accents. Behind the childish fascination that boxes can arouse in Meuh, the artist’s proposal can be read as an invitation to reconnect with a certain art of doing. I also like to see a nod to the situation of young artists, for whom you never really know how the wheel will turn.

Colin Raynal, for Plattform23

Cast Iron, Steel Tubes, Meuh Boxes, Metal Rods

lMain instrument used for this piece is an old mechanical grinder, formerly used to break or crush vegetables. It has been replaced by electric models today, which are obviously more efficient. By turning the wheel, the public can activate the soundscape of the farm. This project questions the imaginary of toys. What if this toy became an instrument, an echo and a symbol of the agricultural environment?
Without the activation of the public, the sculpture remains motionless, silent. By placing the mechanics rather than the electronics at the center of its research, the artist invites the public to step out of their comfort zone. Turning a wheel by hand is not as simple as inserting a part into a machine or pressing a button to activate a mechanism. They have to do it themselves, or they will not hear the cow. By being physically solicited, we listen differently, very differently. We make the sound. We become the cow.

PlattForm23 invites Rachel Morend to present this piece to the Espace Arlaud, in Lausanne, from May to June 2023.

Special thanks to Marcel Bétrisey !