gm project evokes the course and drift of George Montandon, doctor, anthropologist and explorer Swiss-French, born in Cortaillod in Switzerland on April 19, 1879, died in August 1944, shot by the Resistance. A supporter of the Bolshevik Revolution and a member of the Swiss Communist Party around 1920, he later became a theorist of scientific racism, an inspiration for Celine, a collaborator and an anti-Semite.

The photographs on lead and the paintings that make up amorces come from the collection of impressions, traces, clues that originate along Lake Neuchâtel (Cortaillod and Colombier) where Montandon spent his childhood and his youth, and around the University of Geneva where he studied, presented as a psycho-geographic approach of sorts, in the sense Guy Debord defined it in the 1950s, namely "the study of the effects of the geographical environment, consciously arranged or not, acting directly on the emotions and the behaviour of individuals".

At the age of thirty, in 1909, Montandon spent eleven months exploring south-western Ethiopia, particularly Ghimirra, a region close to Sudan, travelling through unknown lands. On his return to Switzerland, he published the account of his journey. The detailed descriptions, illustrated with photographs, diagrams and maps cover all aspects of life in the southwestern provinces. The unpublished documents he published opened up the most eminent geographical societies in England, France, Italy and Switzerland, where he was called upon to give lectures.

Attracted by the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, Montandon went to the Soviet Union in 1919. He is forty-two years old. He was one of the first intellectuals to immerse himself in this revolution.
The International Committee of the Red Cross entrusted him with the task of negotiating and organizing the repatriation by Vladivostok of Austrian prisoners of war held in Siberia. It crosses the country via the Trans-Siberian Railway from Moscow to Sakhalin Island, where the last of the Ainu people live. The mission stops en route at the Buryates' home on Lake Baikal, on the borders of Mongolia. He not only deals with the repatriation of prisoners during these two winters in Russia; he also takes the opportunity to study the morphology of the various peoples he met. As a man of equality, he approved of the Bolshevik revolution, including his political police, the Cheka.

August Hirt, born in 1898 in Mannheim, is the son of a Swiss businessman.
In 1914, as a high school student, he volunteered to take part in the First World War on the German side. In 1921, he became a German citizen. In 1922, he obtained his doctorate in medicine and then worked at the Institute of Anatomy at the University of Heidelberg. He joined the SS General in 1933 and was promoted to Hauptsturmführer (captain) then passed Sturmbannführer (commander) in 1944.
Under the Occupation, August Hirt is the director of the Institute of Anatomy in Strasbourg.
Anticipating the imminent annihilation of the Jewish "race", from 1942 he undertook a project for a "collection of Jewish skulls".
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The question of eugenics, which underlies this work throughout, is now discreetly present in biomedical practices that promote procreation (gene therapy, pre-implantation or prenatal diagnosis, reproductive cloning or genetic therapy).
This is a completely different eugenics than the one practiced in the first half of the 20th century. Unlike state eugenics practiced in the past, contemporary eugenics does not seek to modify the human species and is not imposed. It is a private, negative eugenics, freely chosen by parents, legitimized by neo-liberal ideology. 

gm project   ⏤   amorces

The photographs on lead and the paintings that make up amorces come from the collection of impressions, traces, clues that originate along Lake Neuchâtel (Cortaillod and Colombier) where Montandon spent his childhood and his youth, and around the University of Geneva where he studied, presented as a psycho-geographic approach of sorts, in the sense Guy Debord defined it in the 1950s, namely "the study of the effects of the geographical environment, consciously arranged or not, acting directly on the emotions and the behaviour of individuals".

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gm project   ⏤   mission

Attracted by the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, Montandon went to the Soviet Union in 1919. He is forty-two years old. He was one of the first intellectuals to immerse himself in this revolution.
The International Committee of the Red Cross entrusted him with the task of negotiating and organizing the repatriation by Vladivostok of Austrian prisoners of war held in Siberia. It crosses the country via the Trans-Siberian Railway from Moscow to Sakhalin Island, where the last of the Ainu people live. The mission stops en route at the Buryates' home on Lake Baikal, on the borders of Mongolia. He not only deals with the repatriation of prisoners during these two winters in Russia; he also takes the opportunity to study the morphology of the various peoples he met. As a man of equality, he approved of the Bolshevik revolution, including his political police, the Cheka.

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gm project   ⏤   exploration

At the age of thirty, in 1909, Montandon spent eleven months exploring south-western Ethiopia, particularly Ghimirra, a region close to Sudan, travelling through unknown lands. On his return to Switzerland, he published the account of his journey. The detailed descriptions, illustrated with photographs, diagrams and maps cover all aspects of life in the southwestern provinces. The unpublished documents he published opened up the most eminent geographical societies in England, France, Italy and Switzerland, where he was called upon to give lectures.

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gm project   ⏤   collection

wax, ashes, oil on paper  43x33 cm

August Hirt, born in 1898 in Mannheim, is the son of a Swiss businessman.
In 1914, as a high school student, he volunteered to take part in the First World War on the German side. In 1921, he became a German citizen. In 1922, he obtained his doctorate in medicine and then worked at the Institute of Anatomy at the University of Heidelberg. He joined the SS General in 1933 and was promoted to Hauptsturmführer (captain) then passed Sturmbannführer (commander) in 1944.
Under the Occupation, August Hirt is the director of the Institute of Anatomy in Strasbourg.
Anticipating the imminent annihilation of the Jewish "race", from 1942 he undertook a project for a "collection of Jewish skulls". His idea is to select 150 "typical" Jews from the Auschwitz concentration camp, whose anthropometric measurements he will take and cast the head. These prisoners will then be taken to Natzwiller-Struthof camp, an hour's drive from Strasbourg, to be gassed and their bodies finally returned to the anatomy institute where their skeletons will be stored.
A project approved without hesitation in October 1942 by Heinrich Himmler, who authorized Hirt to begin his "medical experiments". In the summer of 1943, a team led by his assistant, Nazi anthropologist Bruno Beger, arrived in Auschwitz. In five days, 115 people are selected. Decimated by a typhus epidemic, only 86 Jews (57 men and 29 women) finally arrived at Struthof. Divided into four groups, they will be successively gassed and their corpses placed at August Hirt's disposal.

But the doctor won't finish his project. In September 1944, Himmler, worried about the advance of Allied troops, ordered the destruction of this compromising collection. The casts and all reports must be destroyed, the bodies cut into pieces and burn in a crematorium. But there's no time. In the rush, the institute staff simply removed the number tattooed on the left forearm and cremated only the heads, to make the bodies unrecognizable. By the way, August Hirt gets the gold teeth, for his personal behalf.
On 1st December 1944, one week after the liberation of Strasbourg, the remains of the 86 Jewish victims are discovered.
August Hirt committed suicide on June 2, 1945 in Schönenbach, in the Black Forest after having vainly tried to pass through Switzerland.
Bruno Beger was sentenced in 1971 to three years' suspended imprisonment for complicity in the murder of 86 Jews and died in his bed in 2009.

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