Fight-Specific Isola traces the long history of the Isola area of Milan and the organic, spontaneous progress of the Isola Art Center over the past 12 years. Featuring texts and many images, the book tells the story of an artistic and urban transformation, led by artists, who often had to invent tools and concepts along the way. This publication serves as an example of how to act on the ground in today’s urban condition. Different narratives of history, artistic intervention and action allow the reader to trace the complex idea of collectivity, solidarity and fight-specificity. Testing new terms such as dirty cube and dispersed centre this book shows a possible way to respond to the constant pressure of neoliberal development and gentrification.

Isola Art Center is an open, experimental platform for contemporary art based in Milan’s Isola neighborhood. It is powered by energy, enthusiasm and solidarity. Over the last decade Isola Art Center has confronted an urban situation marked by conflict and extensive transformations. Its projects continue to be ‘no-budget’, precarious, hyperlocal. Doing away with conventional hierarchical structures, Isola Art Center rhizomatically brings together Italian and international artists, critics and curators, artists’ collectives, activists, architects, researchers, students and neighborhood groups.

Archive Books
144 pages
21.5 × 28 cm
Format: Paperback
Pages: 432
ISBN: 9783943620016

This series of workshops with guest artists invites everyone who is interested in questions of materiality. We will open up a spontaneous material experimentation lab at Corner College dedicated to what things can do. The idea of the lab is a communal sharing of techniques, of experimenting and tinkering together. So, bring your stuff!

Dealing with materials affords not only a specific knowledge of properties but also concerns the process of thought. Instead of presuming that artists form docile matter, one might assume that the material’s active role in the process of formation. From here, we might also consider the process of formation as being shaped by its very situated emergence. The lab aims at constituting concrete situations of artistic experimentation following the materiality of materials seeking out their aesthetic qualities rather than their scientific properties. How can we engage in a process of “material thought” and how do such thinking activities impinge on artistic practice? Further we wonder, how we can extend our sense of collaboration and of collectivity towards the more-than-human dimensions of existence? What would be the political consequences of such an approach?

This format derives from the field of artistic research but refuses to speak of “new forms of knowledge” and instead amplifies any form of experimental practice as situated, fragmented, and materially active. Initiators of the Lab are Amélie Brisson-Darveau and Christoph Brunner of the Corner College Collective, artist Nicole De Brabandere, and designer and architect Verena Ziegler. The lab invites artists, designers, architects, philosophiers and activists experimenting with materials and material thought in their practice. We will engage in “hands on” material experimentations, seeking out their potential, their capacity to evoke surprising and unforeseen constellations and experiences. Form here the process might take us into the development of a lecture performance, an installation or exhibition, but also text production or a publication.

16:00-19:00h

For the first session the Corner College Collective and Nicole De Brabandere propose explorations of the Corner College’s material and spatio-temporal textures.

“We invite participants to activate the space of Corner College with us as an emergent technical and material ecology. We propose an engagement with the space that explores the multiple potential for qualities of relation and for relation of qualities. This will involve developing a sensitivity with the qualities of the space, which could include the hard concreteness of the floor or the large window vitrine that covers the entire length of one side. To treat the space simultaneously as a material and a relational practice, we propose the exploration of material qualities and textures in terms of how they afford and invite movements in the space. The available materials will include non-woven fabrics (including felt, Tyvek and paper); spreadable materials (such as graphite, charcoal, ink and chalk), liquids (water and ink) and movable projections of photographic footage from previous relational/material explorations. For example, the powdery qualities of charcoal invite different ways of spreading or fixing it with paper. The loose patterning of fibers that compose non-woven textiles invite different ways of opening up its' layers in new relational dynamics. The movable projections will activate the mediated qualities of archival footage as an immediate materiality of light, image and scale. Other processes could include spreading, covering, flowing, binding, blending and layering, among others, that explore both material, movement and spatial thresholds. The space will not be mute. Throughout the process of exploration we will both write and verbalize emergent thresholds as they are felt. This process of articulating while doing will help drive the continual evaluation of processes so that they can be individually or collectively reentered in a dynamic of mediated and immediated movements of thought and feeling. Put otherwise, by integrating conversation into the collective orientation of this phase, we aim to develop thought-traces, memory-artefacts, and lures for feeling.”
(Amélie Brisson-Darveau, Nicole De Brabandere and Christoph Brunner)

The Zurich Art Space Guide is a free of charge A4 color brochure offering an up to date listing of 39 independent art spaces and artist run-spaces in Zürich.

Available in art and culture related places all around Zürich, this free guide has been produced as much for local Zürich art lovers than for visitors to the city. It aims to make more visible and accessible the vibrant independent Zürich based art scene.

It features a map of Zürich on which are indicated the locations of the different art spaces, as well as a listing which provides the names, adresses, websites, public transport connections and contact details of all listed projects.

http://www.artspaceguide.com/



Edition 02 - January 2015

Contact / New Projects / Updates:
artspaceguide@gmx.ch

Published by:
Anne-Laure Franchette, Andreas Marti, Fabio Kunz (Design)

This event on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/1668927363334485/

English (Deutsch siehe unten):

Making Space is a practice not only of hospitality, but also of communality and living together with care. A Sunday brunch for kids and animals together with their parents and caregivers, as well as artists without kids or pets who are interested in the approach or work with children, and all who happen to be hanging out in Zurich on a Sunday morning and would like to brunch with colleagues and are unafraid of the noisy ambience.

The idea is as simple as that: Artists with kids are a generally precarious group in the art scene both as participants in ongoing discourses and due to a lack of time dedicated to their own production. Most of us living with kids feel that there is little opportunity for casual gathering, making space for all kids, animals and their grown-up friends on equal terms.

Corner College invites all of you who will feel comfortable and are interested in taking part in a mixed group in which special attention will be paid to the needs and demands of kids, their self-expression through play or other inspirations to their creativity, to come and gather around a cup of coffee or hot chocolate, some fruit and croissants. We will offer small activities like play that can turn to bookmaking, screenings, crafting with or just touching and tasting materials (sometimes with guests), or performances. We hope that you may contribute to a self-organized making of this space by your presence, your ideas and your involvement.

We are in the process of building a small library that will be available in the space, along with our art journal and editions stand with delicacies from around the globe.

Come and play with us!

Deutsch (English above):

Making Space (Raum schaffen) ist eine Praxis nicht nur der Gastfreundschaft, sondern auch der Gemeinschaftlichkeit und des sorgsamen Zusammenlebens. Ein Sonntagsbrunch für Kinder und Tiere zusammen mit ihren Eltern und Betreuer_innen, sowie Künstler_innen ohne Kinder und Tiere, denen die Vorgehensweise oder die Arbeit mit Kindern interessant scheint. Alle jene, die an einem Sonntagmorgen in Zürich rumhängen und gern mit Kolleg_innen brunchen und das laute Ambiente zu schätzen wissen.

Der Gedanke ist sehr einfach: Künstler_innen mit Kindern sind in der Kunstszene, sowohl als Teilnehmer_innen in zeitgenössischen Diskursen als auch in ihrer Produktion, da sie kaum Zeit finden, allgemein eine prekäre Gruppe. Die meisten von uns, die wir mit Kindern zusammen leben, spüren, dass es kaum Gelegenheiten gibt, sich zwangslos zu treffen, Raum für die Kinder, Tiere und ihre erwachsenen Freund_innen zu beanspruchen.

Corner College lädt alle ein, die sich dabei wohlfühlen und interessiert sind daran, an einer gemischten Gruppe teilzunehmen, in der besonders auf die Bedürfnisse und Wünsche der Kinder, ihren Selbstausdruck im Spiel oder andere Inspirationen ihrer Kreativität geachtet wird, zu kommen und sich um eine Tasse Kaffee oder heisse Schokolade, Früchte und Gipfeli zu versammeln. Wir bieten kleine Beschäftigungen an wie Spiele, die zum Buchmachen, zu Filmvorführungen, Basteln oder auch nur Berühren oder Schmecken von Materialien werden können (manchmal mit Gästen), oder auch zu Performances. Wir hoffen, dass Ihr mit Eurer Anwesenheit, Eure Ideen und Euren Einsatz zum selbstorganisierten Schaffen dieses Raums beitragen mögt.

Wir sind daran, eine kleine Bibliothek aufzubauen, die im Raum verfügbar sein wird, zusammen mit unserem Stand mit Kunstzeitschriften und Editionen mit Delikatessen aus der ganzen Welt.

Kommt und spielt mit uns!

English (Deutsch siehe unten):

As a first event of the series Sunday Brunch – Making Space for Kids and Animals we will start from the idea that the word text and textile are sharing the same origin.

Kids, parents, animals are invited to experiment with various low technological ways of weaving (with a hula hoop or straws or the Corner College space for example) including different materials. The event will be in collaboration with Maria Prieto, trained in biodynamic agriculture, and initiator of an interdisciplinary artistic community project in Chile.

Deutsch (English above):

Für die erste Veranstaltung der Serie Sunday Brunch – Making Space for Kids and Animals gehen wir aus vom Gedanken, dass die Wörter Text und Textil eine gemeinsame Herkunft haben.

Kinder, Eltern, Tiere sind eingeladen, mit unterschiedlichen low-tech Arten des Webens (mit einem Hula-Hoop-Reifen oder Trinkröhrchen oder dem Raum des Corner College zum Beispiel) mit unterschiedlichen Materialien zu experimentieren. Die Veranstaltung findet in Zusammenarbeit mit Maria Prieto statt, die in biodynamischer Landwirtschaft ausgebildet ist und ein interdisziplinäres künstlerisches Gemeinschaftsprojekt in Chile initiiert hat.

Junk Jet is an independent magazine founded in 2007 as a collaborative format, to discuss speculative works in art, architecture, and media. The presentation will be a trip through the world of Junk Jet, consisting of 6 issues, 222 contributors, 666 pages and 5 kilos. In this world (JUNK), the magazine becomes not only a container and archive, but at the same time a transporter (JET)*, a manifesto, architectural structure, performance, and even scientific research. Mona Mahall and Asli Serbest, the editors of Junk Jet, will talk about the history, development and future of Junk Jet.

http://junkjet.net

* Junk Jet has been at “Millennium Magazines”, MOMA: Museum of Modern Art, New York; Perloff Gallery, UCLA Architecture and Urban Design Los Angeles; “A Few Zines” Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design Gallery; “Libros Mutantes”, Contemporary Art Center La Casa Encendida, Madrid; “Archizines”, Australian Centre for Design, Sydney; “Zine”, Kunsthalle Wien, Museumsquartier, Wien; Tokyo Art Book Fair; Osaka Art Book Fair; Shibaura House, Tokyo; Vancouver Art Gallery; HKW, Transmediale, Berlin; AA Architectural Association, London; New York Art Book Fair, etc.

Sinopale, International Sinop Biennial for Contemporary Art, Turkey
in collaboration with Corner College, Zürich
present:

COLLECTING THE FUTURE

2014–2006–2016

A SINOPALE EXHIBITION

13 February to 14 March 2015

With Amélie Brisson-Darveau, Quynh Dong, Benjamin Egger, Esther Kempf, Franziska Koch, Petra Koehle & Nicolas Vermot Petit-Outhenin, Daniel Marti, Garrett Nelson, Cat Tuong Nguyen, RELAX (chiarenza & hauser & co), Romy Rüegger, Riikka Tauriainen, and works from the collection of Sinopale by Alpaslan Baloğlu, Nezaket Ekici, Shilpa Gupta, Ashley Hunt, Emre Koyuncuoğlu, Monali Meher, Lerzan Ozer, Adrien Tirtiaux, XsentrikArts (Bahanur Nasya & Yılmaz Vurucu), Eşref Yıldırım.

Curated by T. Melih Görgün, founder and artistic director of Sinopale, and co-curated by Dimitrina Sevova

Sinopale Newspaper (printable as PDF 3.35MB).


Opening Hours during the exhibition / Öffnungszeiten während der Dauer der Ausstellung:

Monday closed. Montag geschlossen.
Tuesday closed. Dienstag geschlossen.
Wednesday: 3 pm - 7 pm. Mittwoch: 15 - 19 Uhr.
Thursday: 3 pm - 9 pm. Donnerstag: 15 - 21 Uhr
Friday: 3 pm - 7 pm. Freitag: 15 - 19 Uhr.
Saturday 2 pm - 6 pm. Samstag 14 - 18 Uhr.
Sunday 2 pm - 6 pm. Sonntag 14 - 18 Uhr.


The exhibition collects in a non-linearly organized display at Corner College reflections, documentation, archive and research materials as well as some art works from the five editions of Sinopale – International Sinop Biennial, in-between its past, present and future. Especially for this exhibition, the Swiss participants in the past two editions reflect on their work at Sinopale in contributions between archive, research and art work.

Friday, 13 February, 19:00h Opening with the performance Exercice d’Isolation (Tagblatt) by Petra Elena Köhle and Nicolas Vermot Petit-Outhenin, continuing into the next day’s activities

Saturday, 14 February, 16:00h Talk, screening and performances

16:00h Presentation of Sinopale by T. Melih Görgün, founder and artistic director of Sinopale

18:00h Screening of The Sea in Me by XsentrikArts (Bahanur Nasya & Yılmaz Vurucu), 2012, Sinopale 4, documentary, 60ʹ

20:00h Performance My Mondays roll into my Tuesdays, and my Tuesdays roll into my Wednesdays by Riikka Tauriainen

Throughout the afternoon and evening, the performance Exercice d’Isolation (Tagblatt) by Petra Elena Köhle and Nicolas Vermot Petit-Outhenin, continuing from the opening night



One can say that Sinopale is a peripheric and young biennial of contemporary art on the map of the International Biennials of the art world system, and rather alternative to the so-called “biennial phenomena” and their genre. If it has been in a position of weakness with respect to the center and its political, economic and aesthetic dominance, indeed it mobilizes personal and collective collaborative efforts on the creative edge, where crossing over local and global perspectives, south and north and east and west, it analyzes and re-signifies the biennial discourses dominated by a logic of globalization, traveling art lovers and the shipping of expensive art works.

With its less spectacular exhibition and more humble project, it embraces a rather pragmatic approach to its structures, which in its generosity functions in the mode of new institutionalism rather than institutional critique, and even generates a rupture with the representational models of the big-scale art world projects from the center. It has the advantage to re-invent the relevance of the relation between contemporary art practices and daily life, and re-define the paradoxes of the creation of the value and status of art on the limit. It re-situates and re-articulates the notion of art and its institutionally driven formats and betrays the established network of distribution of art, such as the art markets or the circuit of commercial galleries. Where art, in a real situation, can be seen as an object that acts as ambiguous support or medium or catalyst of existential change and new ways of transference of relations, i.e., art practices can be seen as transversal tools for social change that can dissolve in the existing context as they externalize and modulate it and can productively cast new bridges to reconnect the land-space-town, with responsibility towards relational and new ecologies and their potentialities that engender the conditions for creation.

This transversality is not given, but a matter of a pragmatics of existence, a kind of openness and progressive deterritorialization from existing modelization. “Transversality still signifies militant, social, undisciplined creativity” (Félix Guattari), where art practices work as urban guerilla. [1]

Sinopale puts a finger on the painful points and dynamics in the post-industrial and neoliberal conditions of living in-between urbanized and rural environments in which the commercialization and permanence of the economic crises threaten the communities and challenge daily-life existence. Sinopale is a Biennial for all, with its broad and open stage for an aesthetics and politics of art that can empower the quality and quantity of life and bring new experiences in which the present memory and historical past interweave towards the future, with the social and cultural commitment and self-valorization.


[1] Hou Hanru emphasized at the beginning of the 10th International İstanbul Biennial manifesto that “We are living in a time of global wars,” and stated that “In such a debate, artistic actions, including the Biennial itself, can certainly find their roles in prompting cultural and social changes through innovative forces of intervention – a form of urban guerrilla.” 10th International İstanbul Biennial, Hou Hanru, “Not Only Possible, But Also Necessary: Optimism in the Age of Global War” (Istanbul: İstanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts, 2007).





Organized by



Special thanks to




for their support!

Ab 22:00h

DJs
Margit de Sade
Fred Hystère
Nicki Manij

Provitreff, Sihlquai 240, 8005 Zürich

Eintritt: 5.-- Fr.

Corner College - Les Complices* - Dienstgebäude - Le Foyer - OOR - Station 21 - Chamber of Fine Arts - K3 Project Space - Menuedata