A group exhibition with Lisa Biedlingmaier, San Keller, and Maria Pomiansky in collaboration with Vadim Levin

curated by Dimitrina Sevova and Alan Roth,
curatorial interns Miwa Negoro and Swati Prasad.

Saturday, 21 January – Sunday, 19 February 2017

Opening: Saturday, 21 January at 18:00h
Finissage: Sunday, 19 February at 17:00h

Artist talks and other accompanying events to be announced.

Opening Hours
Wed/Fri 15:00h – 18:00h
Thu 16:00h – 19:00h

The exhibition/project will take place in two parts, of which this is the first:
Part 1: Critique de l’économie politique de l’atelier d'artiste
Part 2: Der Prozess / The Trial



Part 1: Critique de l’économie politique de l’atelier d'artiste

The focal point is on the relation between the studio, artist labor, art-work, aesthetic practices and their economic conditions. The studio might be a space where a certain degree of autonomy can be detected. The exhibition/project expresses how productivity in art depends on the relation between the artist’s liberty and the economic and social conditions of art production. The studio is part of the productive flow of relations, subjectivities, institutions, places, materials, techniques. At the same time it is in the grammar of autonomy, aesthetics and politics. There are many possible places and non-places of the studio, but it can still be put mainly in two orbits, as an independent space of a solitude where the artwork is produced, and a more open idea of the studio, where the artwork is performed by artist-labor. It is often a shared space, a space of collaboration that engages with the performative domain of the aesthetics and politics of art production and its economic and social reality.

Lacan’s statement “I replaced Freud’s energetics with political economy” goes one step further and openly engages psychoanalysis with the ‘immanent’ critique of liberal capitalist society. Following psychoanalytic practices, the project Part I: Critique de l’économie politique de l’atelier d’artiste incorporates ‘immanent’ critique in the politico-economic relations in the production of art to reflect and analyze in terms of movements and vectors the current conditions of artist-labor and art-work-life social relations.

It also adopts the critique of the political economy as a method to look at the studio space and the practices there, its social and political impact on art, on the labor and life of the artist. To what extent can the studio support the autonomy of the artist’s practices, and what is its emancipatory political potential? Giorgio Agamben attributes to the Situationists an “unavowed awareness that the genuinely political element consists precisely in this incommunicable, almost ridiculous clandestinity of private life.” The art labor and art-work are inevitably incorporated in the critique of a broad socio-economic process. At the same time, they will remain ‘ridiculously clandestine’ attitudes of free labor outside of the labor-power. In this way the project looks at how a return to critique and autonomy practices can perpetuate an emancipatory politics in art. They can be used as a model for an exit from the ‘hegemonic’ capitalist discourse and capitalist production of value. Autonomy practices, aesthetic immanent critique and politics invent new living forms and socio-economic relations outside of capital, like generic commons, undercommons, etc.

The project reflects on self-organized and self-managed aspects of the artist studio space, the conditions of the artist’s labor and the productive process of art-work there. Work is here used not necessarily to designate an art object. The working environment of the studio can be seen from many angles. At the same time, it remains a place where (un)productive forces play disalienated forms of labor in the work and life of the artists. The artist remains a free laborer who betrays the labor-power and slows down, or accelerates a virtuoso productivity.

The project inevitably asks, can the artist make a living from their art? How can they sustain their working environment relying on income from their artistic labor and art-work. Often, they inhabit the studio mostly in the time in-between several other jobs, while the studio is transformed and adapted to multitasked functions driven by project-oriented work, digitalization and internet. The productive process is automated between two applications for grants, in a diversity of institutional commands by e-mail and research work mostly based on Google searches. Being an artist is a day-to-day job of professional occupation, and at the same time a form of life that can scatter into a new sociality.

At the same time there is indeed a reality gap between the image of the autonomous artist and the actual working conditions of living artists, and how their productivity and the conditions of art production are socially evaluated and valued, between the relative ‘autonomy’ of the studio and today’s institutionally driven art, complemented by the erosion of the autonomy of art by different neoliberal dynamics and the restructuring (financialization, digitalization, gentrification) and the ideology of the free market that inevitably machinically signifies the social production and art, too. Although the artist precariat is potentially revolutionary and resistive, Hito Steyerl describes the instrumental precarization in the third stage of institutional critique that leads merely to “integration into precarity” of artist labor and working and living conditions. “What remains hidden in this – a new ‘hidden abode,’ the practicing artist remains outside of the employment.” At the same time, nowadays the art production process has been connected to digital productive flows, automated and highly professionalized by accelerated competition on a global scale, that disempowers the possibilities for collective, community forms of art, work and life.


Theorem 4. Aesthetic Agency and the Practices of Autonomy

The operations of Moral and Politics, Aesthetics and Immanent Critique, invite a re-thinking in the sense of the moral fight (Nietzsche), as Gilles Deleuze puts it in his essay about Foucault: “A man-form, then, appears only in very special and precarious conditions,” as a dissolved man. All form is a combination of all forces, a mix of human and non-human in the process of individuation. This precarious man-form is the extra-human ethical being of politics. Indeed, in Deleuze and Guattari’s words, “Politics precedes being. Practice does not come after the emplacement of the terms and their relations, but actively participates in the drawing of the lines; it confronts the same dangers and the same variations as the emplacement does.”

The notion of autonomy is investigated and reflected from various perspectives, without a model, as it takes place in the realms of aesthetics and of politics, in the social and the personal, art and practices. Autonomy is distinct from knowledge. As an intensification of power it regroups and redistributes. Despite this, the term of Autonomy has become increasingly derided in art and criticised as egotistical or even attributed to the hegemonic western ideology of the individual, as a result of the connection between the autonomy of art and the autonomy of the artist, and the equalization of both to aesthetic autonomy.

Aesthetic autonomy goes beyond the art context to embrace life as a whole. Aesthetic experience as a practice of philosophy has never been necessarily attached to the field of art and the artwork, and has mutated to the concepts of aesthetics of existence and of life as a work of art (in Foucault’s conceptualization) – “existing not as a subject but as a work of art.” The aesthetics of the ephemeral of the event of political subjectivity and of temporary autonomous zones are dispositions of time or of a brain. They draw “new cerebral pathways, new ways of thinking.” As Deleuze says: “I think subjectification, events, and brains are more or less the same thing.” What can emerge from these practices is the creative struggle that is resistance and invention. Art is resistance, too. These new subjectivities are precarious minor social formations, and to the extent that the artist is part of the precariat in the informal economy, they practice aesthetic autonomy, too. Peter Osborne writes that “aesthetic autonomy is indifferent to the art/non-art distinction,” which is close to Jacques Rancière: “To the extent that the aesthetic formula ties art to non-art from the start, it sets that life up between two vanishing points: art becoming mere life or art becoming mere art.” 


Excerpt from the curatorial text by Dimitrina Sevova in collaboration with Alan Roth (in printable format as PDF, 276KB)



Lisa Biedlingmaier

undefined
2014. HD video.



For centuries, the studio has been perceived not only in its pragmatic function as a workshop or thought laboratorium but to a much larger extent as a place in which the premises of individual artistic identity can be fathomed.

The interior, whether a home office or a study room, provides clues to the personality living or working there.


Das Atelier wurde über Jahrhunderte nicht nur in seiner pragmatischen Funktion als Werkstätte oder gedankliches Laboratorium registriert, sondern in viel grösserem Masse als ein Ort empfunden, an dem die Prämissen für die individuelle künstlerische Identität ergründet werden können.

Das Interieur, ob Privatzimmer oder Arbeitszimmer liefere Indizien über die in ihm wohnende bzw. arbeitende Persönlichkeit.



San Keller

At Work (Cuckoo)



In At Work (Cuckoo) lässt sich San Keller von seinen Künstlerfreunden in deren Ateliers und an deren Arbeit fotografieren.


The L-Word - No mas metales
2015. HD video, 56 min.

Der Schweizer Konzeptkünstler San Keller (1971) reist mit der Absicht nach Los Angeles, auf der Strasse einen Kunstsammler anzutreffen, der ein Werk der amerikanischen Pop-Art-Ikone Andy Warhol (1928-1987) aus seiner Sammlung gegen sämtliche Werke des politischen Zeichners und Karikaturisten Martin Disteli (1802-1844) im Besitz des Kunstmuseum Olten tauschen würde.

Auf seinen Streifzügen rund um Hollywood entfernt sich San Keller immer weiter vom ursprünglichen Ziel, einen Sammler zu finden, der einen Warhol gegen den Oltner Disteli-Nachlass tauschen würde. In den Vordergrund rückt stattdessen die Suche – die Suche an sich, oder aber die Suche nach dem Bild. The L-Word - No mas metales ist jedoch auch eine filmische Reflexion über ein mysteriöses L-Word (Los Angeles, Liebe, Langeweile, Loch oder Liberalismus?), über die Suggestionskraft von Bildern, die Macht des Geldes und vor allem über die Freiheit - die Kernthemen Distelis also.



Maria Pomiansky in collaboration with Vadim Levin

In situ studio



What is the role of the painter's atelier in contemporary art practice? The archaic features are mixed with the needs of today's life. A painter 's atelier is one of the last bastions of non-computer activities. It can be interpreted as a manifestation of humanity. And it’s not by chance that technique is put back on stage and reworked through the lenses of conceptual art to produce paintings that elaborate on the reality surrounding us.

I would like to produce a painting which would change during the time of the exhibition and would be an attempt to view the atelier as a sacral symbol, a game where the human brain, the hand and the eyes play the leading roles.

Aaron Schirrmann (Architekt) und Lisa Biedlingmaier (Künstlerin und Kuratorin) berichten über den aktuellen Stand der Container City und die Arbeit des Kunstvereins Wagenhalle in Stuttgart.

Seit einer Woche laufen die Renovierungsarbeiten an der Wagenhalle, die in 2 Jahren wiedereröffnet werden soll.
Ein Ort an dem seit 2004, über 80 verschiedene Ateliers, Werkstätte, Proberäume und der Ausstellungsraum Kunstverein Wagenhalle ihr temporäres Zuhause hatten.

Der Kunstverein hat jetzt ein Interimsquartier auf dem Gelände vor der Halle aufgebaut. Die meisten Künstler und Kulturschaffenden sind vor Ort geblieben und arbeiten weiter in den ca. 140 Containern und einigen Sonderbauten.

images: Aida Nejad
photography: Ferdinando Iannone

This event is part of the exhibition project Theorem 4. Aesthetic Agency and the Practices of Autonomy. Part I: Critique de l’économie politique de l’atelier d'artiste.

The Curatorial Reading Group is a monthly reading session, aimed at enhancing our creativities in curatorial approaches through a continuous series of discussions. Under the theme of ‘Art and the Notion of Time,’ each session focuses on a selected text from theory to artistic practice.

For the first session on 30 January 2017, we will read and discuss the inspiring book It Had Something to Do with the Telling of Time. Spaces in fiction – Constructs of Reality by Annee Grøtte Viken.

If you are interested in our reading session please contact us! We will write you back with a copy of the book, and warmly recommend you to read it before the session.

Contact: Miwa Negoro (Corner College), miwa.negoro (at) gmail (dot) com

Mapping Graphic Design History in Switzerland is not just another book that retells the success story of Swiss graphic design. It is a collection of eleven selected essays deriving from academic research that explores historical dimensions of graphic design in Switzerland – from producing it, to archiving and exhibiting it.

The book is also an endeavor to open up a space for graphic design history by providing new perspectives, ideas and tools that enable historical research in such a crucial field for Switzerland as graphic design and typography.

On this occasion, the editors Davide Fornari and Robert Lzicar and publisher Triest invite you to celebrate the launch of the book. A presentation of the book will be followed by a number of talks by contributors and sponsors on why they did support / contribute. The evening will end with a toast on the publication.

Program

19:00–19:10 Greeting: Kerstin Forster (publisher at Triest Verlag)
19:10–19:30 Presentation of the book: Davide Fornari, Robert Lzicar (editors of “Mapping Graphic Design History in Switzerland”)
19:30–19:40 Speaker 1: Sarah Owens (ZHdK and Swiss Design Network SDN)
19:40–19:50 Speaker 2: Marina Oliveira (Designer of Visual Essays, Graphic Designer, Zurich)
19:50–20:00 Speaker 3: Peter Vetter (Coande, ZHdK)
20:00–20:10 Speaker 4: Bettina Richter (Poster Collection, MfG - auf Deutsch/in German)
20:10–20:15 Questions & Statements
20:15–21:00 Apéro

Davide Fornari is associate professor at ECAL University of Art and Design in Lausanne, where he leads the research and development sector. He has previously been teacher and researcher at SUPSI University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland.

Robert Lzicar is a designer, educator and researcher. At the HKB Bern University of the Arts, he is head of the MA Communication Design, researcher at the Department of R+D Communication Design, and professor of design history.

Zum Feierabend ein Freibier für alle die heute nicht blau gemacht haben.

This event is part of the exhibition project Theorem 4. Aesthetic Agency and the Practices of Autonomy. Part I: Critique de l’économie politique de l’atelier d'artiste.

Book Launch “Happy Tropics” with Michael Schindhelm (author, culture adviser, theatre and film maker), Damian Christinger (curator, Zurich University of the Arts) and students of Zurich University of the Arts.

This book is an attempt to translate new understandings of transcultural connections into a dialogue. Contributions and insights by important actors in the cultural field such as Eugene Tan, Rem Koolhaas, Benson Puah, June Yap, Gwee Li Sui, and Philip Ursprung, Michael Schindhelm and Damian Christinger frame research by students from the Zurich University of the Arts, and create a multi-voiced and multi-faceted approach to understanding the rapidly-changing cultural topographies of Singapore.

Happy Tropics I consists of two parts that run (literally) parallel throughout the book. The first section, “Why Singapore,” focuses on insights from outside the city state, and consists of a conversation between Rem Koolhaas and Michael Schindhelm, an essay by Philip Ursprung, and an artistic contribution by the U5 art collective, among the contributions by the students of the Zurich University of the arts. The second section, “Learning from Singapore,” gives room to different voices from within, featuring interviews with Glen Goei, Beh Swan Gin, Benson Puah, Eugene Tan, and an essay by Gwee Li Sui.

As Singapore becomes a global leader in both the financial and knowledge-production sectors, increasing emphasis is being put on both the production and dissemination of culture in the island-state. While it was still regarded as an “emerging country” two decades ago, it has become one of the leading nations regarding infrastructure, urbanisation, and service industries. The question as to whether arts and culture will follow suit is being closely followed by other nations worldwide who aspire to similar developmental goals. Singapore can be thought of as a kind of laboratory for the enabling, production, education, and consumption of arts and culture. Understanding culture as a mirror of society, instrument of national identification, and site for dialogue and exchange with other cultures allows us to view it as a litmus test for the resilience of an unprecedented societal concept.

Within this framework, Happy Tropics I can be seen as a case study and a laboratory for different approaches to dealing with the challenges of globalization, as the cultural topographies of Singapore are not only changing, but also constituting themselves in our timeframe. Understanding the city as a responsive network that can be harnessed for research and education projects reflects this reality, and encouraged us to come with our students from the Zurich University of the Arts to Singapore, delving into its mesh and trying to learn that seeing eye to eye is so much more important then perceived hierarchies, a concept that is also reflected in the design and structure of this book.

Happy Tropics I is a publication by Michael Schindhelm and Damian Christinger in collaboration with the Zurich University of the Arts, and is classified as the Connecting Spaces Document # 10.

http://www.connectingspaces.ch/happy-tropics-book-launch-2/

18:30h doors open
19:00h panel discussion

Die Podiumsdiskussion findet auf Deutsch und Englisch statt.
The panel discussion will be held in German and in English.


[English below]

Tonjaschja Adler, Delphine Chapuis Schmitz, Vreni Spieser, und Nina von Meiss und Christina Pfander von Mickry3 im Gespräch mit den Kuratorinnen Nadja Baldini, Dimitrina Sevova und Tanja Trampe. Danach Plenumsdiskussion mit dem Publikum. Und Suppe und Bar.
Die Podiumsdiskussion reflektiert kritisch aus den unterschiedlichen Perspektiven der geladenen Künstlerinnen, wie künstlerische Arbeit heute unter Post-Studio-Bedingungen geleistet wird, inwieweit die Präkarität und Präkarisierung, die den jetzigen wirtschaftlichen Bedingungen und den finanziellen Strukturen innewohnen, die innerhalb der Kultursphäre operieren, die Kunstproduktion, das Arbeitsumfeld der Künstlerin und ihre Lebenssituation prägen.
Das Augenmerk liegt auf der Beziehung zwischen Studio, künstlerischer Arbeit, Herstellung von Kunst, ästhetische Praktiken und deren wirtschaftliche Bedingungen. Das Studio mag ein Raum mit einer gewissen Autonomie sein. Die Podiumsdiskussion stellt die Frage, auf welche Weise die Produktivität in der Kunst heute abhängt von der Beziehung zwischen der Freiheit der Künstlerin und den wirtschaftlichen und sozialen Bedingungen der Kunstproduktion. Das Studio ist Teil des produktiven Flusses von Beziehungen, Orten, Architektur, Materialien, Techniken und Infrastruktur. Gleichzeitig ist es in der Grammatik der Autonomie, der Ästhetik und Politik. Es gibt viele mögliche Orte und Nichtorte des Studios, und doch findet es sich in zwei hauptsächlichen Umlaufbahnen, als unabhängiger Raum der Einsamkeit, in dem das Kunstwerk produziert wird, und als offenere Vorstellung des Studios, wo das Kunstwerk von der Arbeitskraft der Künstlerin geleistet wird.
Welches ist die Rolle des Studios im städtischen Gewebe, und wir wird seine Unterstützung geplant? Welches ist die Rolle der selbstorganisierten Studios auf der wirtschaftlichen Landkarte, und wie ist die Herstellung von Kunst im Studio heute organisiert?
Wie wirkt sich Kulturpolitik und staatliche Finanzhilfe für Studio aus und formt die Kunstproduktion, wie auch das Leben und die Existenz der Künstlerin? Selbst unter Post-Studio-Bedingungen markiert der Arbeitsraum der Künstlerin eine Zone der Autonomie, wo sich ein ‚nicht-sanktionierender‘ Kontext von Kunstpraktiken und ‚ungezähmten‘ Beziehungen abspielen können. Wie, kann ebenso gefragt werden, kann Gesellschaftlichkeit als erweitertes oder versprengtes Studio betrachtet werden? Wie kann das Studio kooperative Formen und selbstorganisierte Strukturen innerhalb des städtischen Gefüges und der Kunstpraktiken, künstlerische Arbeit, Herstellung von Kunst herbeiführen und gleichzeitig pulsierende Formen des Lebens organisieren?
Welchen Pfad der kritischen Befragung und welche Art von Methodologie lässt sich in einer Recherche über die (Post-) Studio-Bedingungen anwenden, um Phänomene der Destabilisierung des Studios, der Mobilität und immateriellen Produktion zu reflektieren? Und doch kennzeichnet und signifiziert das Studio nach wie vor einen Raum, in dem künstlerische Arbeit geleistet wird, und die Formen der Organisierung des Arbeitsprozesses der Kunstproduktion. Es bleibt verhältnismässig im Schatten des Privatraums und der Schattenwirtschaft, im Gegensatz zum Museum, zum Kunstraum und der Kunst, die sich im öffentlichen Umfeld abspielt.
Wie können Künstlerinnen ihr Arbeitsumfeld aufrechterhalten, gestützt auf ein Einkommen aus ihrer künstlerischen Arbeit und der Herstellung von Kunst? Oftmals bewohnen sie das Studio lediglich im Zeitraum zwischen mehreren anderen Jobs, während das Studio transformiert und an die Multitasking-Anforderungen projektorientierter Arbeit, Digitalisierung und Internet angepasst wird. Der produktive Prozess ist zwischen zwei Eingaben für Stipendien automatisiert in einer Vielfalt von Kommandos über E-Mail und weitgehend auf Google-Suche abgestützter Recherchearbeit. Künstlerin zu sein ist ein Alltagsjob professioneller Beschäftigung, und gleichzeitig auch eine Form des Lebens, die in eine neue Gesellschaftlichkeit versprengt werden kann. Hito Steyerl beschreibt die instrumentelle Präkarisierung im dritten Stadium der institutionellen Kritik, die lediglich zur „Integration“ der künstlerischen Arbeit sowie der Arbeits- und Lebensbedingungen „in die Präkarität“ führt.“ „Was darin verborgen bleibt – eine neue ‚verborgne Stätte‘ – die praktizierende Künstlerin bleibt ausserhalb der Anstellung.“ Desgleichen ist die Kunstproduktion heutzutage an digitale Produktionsflüsse angeschlossen, automatisiert und hochgradig professionalisiert durch die beschleunigte Konkurrenz im globalen Massstab, welche die Möglichkeiten für kollektive, gemeinschaftliche Formen der Kunst, der Arbeit und des Lebens.
Künstlerinnen streben oft und offen danach, in der Stadt billige und grosse Orte zum Arbeiten zu erschliessen. Der Kampf um freien Raum und mehr Räume in der Stadt, wie in Zürich und anderen Städten in den 1980ern, bringt das Studio dazu, im Widerstand gegen Gentrifizierungsprozesse nachzuhallen, der bisweilen gar in der Besetzung von Gebäuden endete. Wie kann es neue Formen des Widerstands eröffnen, und inwieweit sind Künstlerinnen und kulturelle Arbeiterinnen heute imstande, eine revolutionäre Kraft und politische Subjektivität zu leisten, während sich die das Wesen der Arbeit verändert? Wie können sie in diesem sozialen Wandel zurückfordern und verhandeln? Lacans Aussage „Ich habe Freuds Energetik durch die politische Ökonomie ersetzt“ geht einen Schritt weiter und konfrontiert die Psychoanalyse offen mit der ‚immanenten‘ Kritik der liberalen kapitalistischen Gesellschaft. Psychoanalytischen Praktiken folgend, schliesst das Projekt Part I: Critique de l’économie politique de l’atelier d’artiste eine ‚immanente‘ Kritik der polit-ökonomischen Beziehungen in der Produktion von Kunst ein, um die jetzigen Verhältnisse der künstlerischen Arbeit und Kunst-Herstellung-Leben sozialen Beziehungen in Bezug auf Bewegungen und Vektoren zu reflektieren und zu analysieren.
Welche Auswirkung hat das offene Studio als Form der Aktivierung und Mobilisierung von Publiken und andere Art, Kunst zu organisieren? Wie reflektiert das Format des offenen Studios die jetzige Tendenz des internationalen Kunstaustauschs, von Residenzen angetrieben zu werden? Wie wirkt es sich auf den Produktionsprozess aus (Arbeitsbedingungen und arbeitswirtschaftliche Bedingungen)? Wie stellt das Studio ‚andere‘ experimentelle Formen des Ausstellungsmachen zur Schau, die sich in ihm entfalten können?

Ausgewählte und überarbeitete Auszüge aus dem Text von Dimitrina Sevova für die Ausstellung Theorem 4. Aesthetic Agency and the Practices of Autonomy. Part I: Critique de l’économie politique de l’atelier d'artiste, in Zusammenarbeit mit Alan Roth

Druckfähige Fassung (PDF 98KB)

Diese Podiumsdiskussion ist Teil des Ausstellungsprojekts Theorem 4. Aesthetic Agency and the Practices of Autonomy. Part I: Critique de l’économie politique de l’atelier d’artiste.



[Deutsch oben]

Tonjaschja Adler, Delphine Chapuis Schmitz, Vreni Spieser, and Nina von Meiss and Christina Pfander of Mickry3 in conversation with the curators Nadja Baldini, Dimitrina Sevova and Tanja Trampe. Followed by a plenary discussion with the audience. And soup and bar.
The panel discussion critically reflects from the various perspectives of the invited artists how the artist’s labor is performed today under post studio conditions, to what extent the precarity and precarization inherent in the current economic conditions and the financial structures that operate within the cultural sphere signify the art production, the artist’s working environment and living situation.
The focal point is on the relation between the studio, artists’ labor, art-work, aesthetic practices and their economic conditions. The studio might be a space with a certain degree of autonomy. The panel discussion asks how productivity in art depends today on the relation between the artist’s liberty and the economic and social conditions of art production. The studio is part of the productive flow of relations, subjectivities, institutions, places, architecture, materials, techniques, and infrastructures. At the same time it is in the grammar of autonomy, aesthetics and politics. There are many possible places and non-places of the studio, but it can still be found in two main orbits, as an independent space of solitude where the artwork is produced, and a more open idea of the studio, where the artwork is performed by artist-labor.
What is the role of the studio in the urban fabric and how is its public support planned? What is the role of self-organized studios on the economic map, and how is art-work organized in the studio today?
How do cultural policy and state financial support to the studios impact and shape the production of art, and the lives and existence of the artist, too? Even under post studio conditions, the artist’s working space marks a zone of autonomy, where a ‘non-sanction’ context of art practices and ‘unruly’ relations can take place. At the same time, how can sociality be seen as an expanded or scattered studio? How can the studio induce cooperative forms and self-organized structures within the urban tissue and art practices, art labor, art-work and at the same time organize vibrant forms of life.
What path of critical inquiry and what kind of methodology can be applied in a research about the (post) studio conditions, to reflect on the phenomena of unsettling the studio, mobility, and immaterial production? At the same time, the studio still designates and signifies a space where art labor is performed, and the forms of organization of the working process of the art production. It stays relatively in the shadow of the private space and the hidden economy, unlike the museum, the art space or art taking place in the public environment.
How can artists sustain their working environment relying on income from their artistic labor and art-work? Often, they inhabit the studio mostly for a time in-between several other jobs, while the studio is transformed and adapted to multitasked functions driven by project-oriented work, digitalization and internet. The productive process is automated between two applications for grants, in a diversity of institutional commands by e-mail and research work based largely on Google searches. Being an artist is a day-to-day job of professional occupation, and at the same time a form of life that can scatter into a new sociality. Hito Steyerl describes the instrumental precarization in the third stage of institutional critique that leads merely to “integration into precarity” of artist labor and working and living conditions. “What remains hidden in this – a new ‘hidden abode,’ the practicing artist remains outside of the employment.” At the same time, nowadays the art production process has been connected to digital productive flows, automated and highly professionalized by accelerated competition on a global scale that disempowers the possibilities for collective, community forms of art, work and life.
Artists often and openly strive to gain cheap and large places in the city for working. The struggle for free space and more space in the city, as in Zurich and other cities in the 1980s, makes the studio issue resonate within the resistance against gentrification processes, that has sometimes ended up even in the occupation of buildings. How can it open new forms of resistance, and to what extent are artists and cultural workers today able to perform a revolutionary force and political subjectivity when the nature of work is changing? How can they re-claim and negotiate in these social changes? Lacan’s statement “I replaced Freud’s energetics with political economy” goes one step further and openly engages psychoanalysis with the ‘immanent’ critique of liberal capitalist society. Following psychoanalytic practices, the project Part I: Critique de l’économie politique de l’atelier d’artiste incorporates an ‘immanent’ critique of the politico-economic relations in the production of art to reflect and analyze the current conditions of artist-labor and art-work-life social relations in terms of movements and vectors.
What is the impact of the open studio, as a form of activating and mobilizing audiences and a different way of organizing art? How does the format of the open studio reflect the current tendency of international art exchange to be residency driven? How does it impact the process of production (working conditions and labor economic conditions)? How does the studio dis-play ‘other’ experimental forms of exhibition making that can unfold in the studio?

Selected and reworked excerpts from the text by Dimitrina Sevova for the exhibition Theorem 4. Aesthetic Agency and the Practices of Autonomy. Part 1: Critique de l’économie politique de l’atelier d'artiste, in collaboration with Alan Roth

Printable version (PDF 94KB)

The panel discussion is part of the exhibition project Theorem 4. Aesthetic Agency and the Practices of Autonomy. Part 1: Critique de l’économie politique de l’atelier d'artiste.



Tonjaschja Adler



These aus „ein Essay über die Abstraktionsebene der Kategorie Arbeit“ 2015, Tonjaschja Adler

ARBEIT=KUNST=ARBEIT

Was kann ich unaufgefordert tun?
Wohin nehme ich mein Atelier mit?

Als Künstlerin befinde ich mich auf der „Abstraktionsebene“ der Kategorie Arbeit. Arbeit kann nicht ohne Gesellschaft gedacht werden. Der Begriff der Arbeit wird also von der Gesellschaft in der ich lebe definiert. Heisst das, dass die Schwerpunkte auf die alle wir, die in dieser Gesellschaft leben oder die sich in einer Gruppe dieser Gesellschaft in der man sozialisiert wird und sich befindet, definiert was Arbeit ist ? Worin besteht ihr Wert?
Für fast jede Arbeit gibt es ein Taxierungssystem, auf das man sich mal einigen konnte, aber das durchaus immer wieder zur Diskussion steht. Für die Arbeit der Künstlerin, des Künstlers? Auch.



Delphine Chapuis Schmitz



une terrasse de café, a bookstore a library, the street die Welt, a room of one's own, a place where to be and think freely and do nothing - nothing you have to.
a place where to retreat, the possibility of (if only)
atelier: the whole world, a playground


Vreni Spieser

Why should artists, who are in general earning very little money, pay two rents per month?
It’s kind of ridiculous.

I can’t focus and concentrate in a shared studio, I have to be on my own.
But:
Dialogues or having a counterpart is very important in my working process. It’s contradictory.

I don’t like people saying “Oh, it’s so inspiring to visit you in your studio”.

Since I am working at home, I am kind of isolated.

I am thinking about renting a studio again, but I’m afraid it will cut my flexibility and ability to travel.



Nina von Meiss and Christina Pfander / Mickry3

Mickry 3 was founded in 1998 by Christina Pfander, Dominique Vigne and Nina von Meiss in Zurich, right after they finished their studies in fine arts at F+F School for Art and Media Design.
Their collaboration began with “M3 Supermarkt”. Arranged as an installation with over 1’000 self-made unique objects, the palette ranged from happiness pills to human organs to a female orgasm, all wrapped in cellophane and available at bargain prices. The motto was to produce inexpensive art for everybody while at the same time undermining the functioning of the art business. Somehow this subverting procedure became a slogan of the trio.
Their works often relate to art history and copying, interpreting and re-interpretation is an ever-recurring aspect of their work, which has continued to develop strongly over the years. But what runs through the whole body of work created by Mickry 3 is a sense of humour and a critical but never moralistic attitude towards society.
In 2006 the trio – who works exclusively in the collective – joined the Association of Swiss Sculptors AZB and moved to their conglomerate of workshops and exterior working spaces in the peripheral area of former gasworks in Schlieren. The association, founded in 1983 by a group of sculptors, among which artist Heinz Niederer, settled there in 1984. AZB functions as a self-sustaining association, the protected gasworks area, located on a property of the City of Schlieren, is in possession of the City of Zurich. This overall environment has influenced in many ways the artistic practice of Mickry 3. Beside others, questions towards a “Critique de l’économie politique de l’atelier d’artiste” include to what extent such a structure, setting and environment can influence the artistic and political self-conception. Not least because the area seems to be an ideal place not only to work – but to spend time.

16:30h doors open

17:00h Artist presentation by Maria Pomiansky, followed by discussion between Maria Pomiansky and curator Dimitrina Sevova.

18:00h Spirits Call, a performance by Vadim Levin. Vadim Levin in a dialogue with a dead artist. The name of the artist will be announced later.



This event is part of the exhibition project Theorem 4. Aesthetic Agency and the Practices of Autonomy. Part I: Critique de l’économie politique de l’atelier d'artiste.

A group exhibition with Robert Estermann, Jakob Jakobsen, Lara Jaydha, Jso Maeder, Aya Momose, Saman Anabel Sarabi & Josefine Reisch

curated by Dimitrina Sevova and Alan Roth,
co-curated by Miwa Negoro and Swati Prasad.


Opening: 24 February 2017, 19:00h

Opening Hours / Öffnungszeiten
Wed/Fri 15:00h – 18:00h
Thu 16:00h – 19:00h


Saturday, 25 February 2017, 17:00h (doors open 16:30h)
17:00h Screening and artist talk by Aya Momose, followed by a discussion between Aya Momose, Miwa Negoro and the audience.
Japanese artist Aya Momose will screen Exchange Diary (2015-; 48 min), made in collaboration with Korean artist Im Heung-soon.
19:00h Discussion between the artists Robert Estermann, Jakob Jakobsen, Jso Maeder, Saman Anabel Sarabi & Josefine Reisch and the curators Dimitrina Sevova and Alan Roth.


Thursday, 2 March, 19:00h
Screening of The Judgment, video by Kosta Tonev, and discussion with the artist.


Saturdays, 4 and 11 March, 14:00h
INTERMEZZO (locus solus), in which the audience is invited to a public visit of Jso Maeder's storage to select a few wrapped pieces or parts of installations, based on their wrapped shape, without seeing them. They will then be transported to Corner College for a public mis a nu par un objet.

14.00h: Meet at Bhf. Oerlikon, bus stop 62 direction “Schwamendingerplatz”, or
14.15h: Werkerei Schwamendingen, Luegislandstr. 105, 8051 ZH (Eingang Halle)
17.30h: Corner College (le public mis a nu par un objet)


Sunday, 19 March, 16:00h
Celebrating high times on a Sunday afternoon with a small reading out of the book Josefine, a special high time music set, some tea and gin. high times at Corner College: http://www.hightimepublishers.com


“The machine has to be rediscovered under the sensibility which is no more than a theatrical effect of it.” (Jean-François Lyotard) 1
“Someone must have traduced Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning.” Despite that “K. claims to be innocent and doesn’t even know the Law,” he has been convicted.

The novel Der Prozess by Franz Kafka is appropriated for the title and gives the direction of the second part of the exhibition project Theorem 4. Aesthetic Agency and the Practices of Autonomy. Written between 1914 and 1915, it pulls the reader into a maze of ambiguous biopower entity control by a remote authority, where the nature of the crime is never revealed to either the character Josef K. or the reader. The world is subject to rules and obeys laws – there is order in this world, and knowledge of this world comes by knowledge of its ‘law,’ as Isaac Newton might have said. At the same time, it is haunted by a radical instability. Laws can change. They can be valid for a time but not eternally. The novel remained uncompleted, in a state of ever incompleteness, which turns out to be a concept. Some lines cross over between The Trial and In the Penal Colony, a short story written in October 1914 and published 1919, which describes a sophisticated machine, a device of torture and execution that carves the sentence on the skin of the condemned prisoner before letting him die, all in the course of twelve hours. Kafka, who himself studied law and performed an obligatory year of unpaid service as a law clerk for the civil and criminal courts, was obsessed with the system of justification and the process of justice, of law and aesthetics.

“Baumgarten published his Aesthetica, the first aesthetics, in 1750. Kant would say of this work simply that it was based on an error. Baumgarten confuses judgment, in its determinant usage, when the understanding organizes phenomena according to categories, with judgment in its reflexive usage when, in the form of feeling, it relates to the indeterminate relationship between the faculties of the judging subject.” (Lyotard)

The flashing K-function in the middle is a micro intra-process of reflective actions in a pre-reflexive impersonal consciousness – the real(ity) of virtuality, the power to affect and to be affected, what Deleuze defines to be a theater without a stage. There is no personal inputs by the actors, who do not embody characters, but are only masks behind which there is nothing, just another mask. Their performance of repetitive clothing veils the plane, and is the collective acting of the three avatars Percept, Affect, Concept, which constitute the forces of individuation and the positive estrangement or displacement that clothe the event and transform it.
In Hegel’s negative dialectics, they are Abstract, Negative, Concrete, or Immediate, Mediated, Concrete. In Deleuze, they are transformed into the positive affirmation of No! The immanence evokes the masks and hiding, crime, and the false (the fancy, or funky). The politics of justice, which is not only in the ethical but also in the aesthetic domain, deals with the distribution of force between the layers of violence and control.

The exhibition tests the ‘other’ logic of Labor of negativity (Hegel), which resonates in Karl Marx’s Theories of Surplus Value, in which he constructs the notion of an “other” to “consciousness” or an “other” to “productive” labor as the case may be. The ability of labor to recognize itself in terms of its own otherness, or to ‘create a void in front of themselves.’ (Althusser) Only in the void can solidarity become concrete. There is a striking proximity between the theory of surplus value and the aesthetic sublime, that in the economy of translation comes even closer the politics, aesthetics and economics.

Excerpts from the curatorial text by Dimitrina Sevova, in collaboration with Alan Roth.

We also refer you to the first section of the curatorial text for Part I of this exhibition project, which applies to both chapters.



Robert Estermann

Out of the Fog
2016. Video, HD, 20′35″, looped.



I let the rider ride. I set up a spectacle („I“ not being a less speculative claim than „spectacle“). Everywhere (prism-like), are uncounted drum-like cylinders (to use an image) with reflecting surfaces autonomically revolving around themselves, deflecting the light from all the other cylinders. The wobbling „man with the movie camera“ is just one of these revolving cylinders in this beach-scape. There is no relationship between them – none. Out of the fog is being recorded just after sunrise. Coming out from the cold into the warm, the glasses of the camera are foggy when starting recording. During the video, the fog on the glasses is slowly fading away. Speaking of revolving cylinders, the earlier work Distant Riders consists of a larger-than-life model of a zoetrope, a revolving cylinder with vertical slices on it, one of the first cinematographic devices.

„In this larger-than-life zoetrope, the individual riders merge, so to speak, into a single rider. The landscape in the background of the nine photographs also seems to coalesce into a hyper-landscape. The background does not refer to a concrete geography more closely defined in temporal and spatial terms, but is rather the visual correspondence of a more diffuse kind of “beach-likeness” with a heavily metaphorical element: distance, culturally protected zone, state of emergency. Once again we are dealing not with a literally political discourse - for which read sexually reformist, generally “liberationist” – although it is also possible to discern an atmosphere of this kind in Distant Riders. This atmosphere is produced by the hallucinatory effect of the signifiers of the 1970s which Estermann is quoting here, apparent in the slightly voyeuristic gaze with which the riders enter the field of vision. One consequence of this hallucinatory treatment of signs may be that another context interposes itself over the sexually reformist and generally “liberationist” discourse of the 1970s: the question of the economic, political or even erotic relationship between humans and animals. But how does this theme arise, when it is neither formulated as an ethical programme nor idealised as a mythical unity from the past? As has already been discussed, the slight sexualisation of the motif of the girl rider is too faint to locate the sequence of images in the sphere of the obscene, let alone the perverse. And the atmosphere of the images, with their location in a distant, undefined coastal zone is too restrained to be subjected to a moral discourse. One key may be the landscape. Its significance as a trope may be better understood if we compare it with the function of the scenic refuge zone commonly featured in dystopias: usually this is portrayed as a zone contrasting with the civilised space, which is why it is depicted alternately as an inaccessible desert far from city life, as in Brave New World, as a hidden, protected forest at the end of the last railway line as in Fahrenheit 451, or as a distant coastal zone as in Distant Riders. This counter-world is rich in sensations and full of sensual freshness (in Fahrenheit 451, this is represented by the constant light snowfall in the protected zone of the forest). But as it is freed from the everyday, and its inhabitants are often in a kind of temporally and/or culturally exceptional condition, there is always something unreal – phantasmatic – about the counter-world. This makes its psychological function all the more important: it allows the citizens to experience sensomotoric renewal or even awakening (as opposed to social anaesthesia), psychical continuity (as opposed to schizoid fragmentation), and develop ethical care (as opposed to moral cynicism).“
Excerpt from: Improper Thinking by Daniel Kurjakovic
in: Robert Estermann, Pleasure, Habeas Corpus, Motoricity. The Great Western Possible, ed. Susanne Neubauer, Kunstmuseum Luzern, Museum of Art Lucerne, edition fink, Zurich, 2007, ISBN 978-3-03746-105-1


Scenic Tongical
2015, two artist’s newspapers, concept with Georg Rutishauser, Edition Fink, Zürich.





Jakob Jakobsen

Antiknow Scene 2. The Body Event (Plumbing). On improvisation, unlearning and antiknow
2013-2017. Work-papers from the Antiknow Research Group and one speaker playing unskilled music. From Antiknow. A pedagogical theatre of unlearning and the limits of knowledge. Directed by Jakob Jakobsen.



The installation Antiknow is a collective effort into unlearning and nonknowledge as critical strategies. This, in a time where institutional and frozen forms of knowledge and learning shaped by economic forces increasingly characterise education and society in general. The term ‘Antiknow’ was originally introduced by John Latham as his course title for the Antiuniversity of London in 1968. It is doubtful whether this course ever took place.

During his six-month residency at Flat Time House, starting in April 2013, visual artist Jakob Jakobsen engaged in elaborating possible meanings and consequences of the term Antiknow in the current context of so-called knowledge economy. Jakobsen set up the Antiknow Research Group, involving young artists from FTHo’s MFI Graduate Group as well as a number of artists, writers and therapists with whom Jakob has collaborated for many years. This led to a series of meetings focusing on Antiknow in relation to work, politics, art and resistance. Marina Vishmidt, Maria Berrios, Howard Slater and John Cunningham were invited to reflect on specific themes within these fields of social practice. Also involved in the group were John Hill, Mary Vettise, Henrik Heinonen, Claire Louise Staunton, Katriona Beales, Mohammad Namazi, Danny Hayward, amongst other incidental participants.



This installation is one of the consequences of Antiknow and involves experiments into drama for non-actors, unskilled music and free drawing. The installation refers to FTHo as a ready-made stage, using as a point of departure the anthropomorphic scheme that John Latham proposed for the building, where each room is dedicated to a specific part of the body: The Mind, The Brain, The Body Event (Plumbing), and the Hand. In the space, a mechanical theatre was developed. The various themes investigated by the Antiknow Research Group are presented as a drama (or anti-drama) between sets of loudspeakers and synchronised lighting. The scripts have been produced collectively using transcriptions of the Antiknow Research Group meetings. The improvised/unskilled music is produced together with Paul Abbott and Gabriel Humberstone.



Lara Jaydha

Broken and open
2017. Moving Image | A series of digital collages (work in progress)



We reach out for a real connection to stay afloat in a sea of submerged emotions. From a deep sense of longing for connection, comes the desire to open and share parts of ourselves. We allow ourselves to be vulnerable and in doing so realize the fragility of our existence. There is an attempt to hold on to the present but everything keeps slipping away. Endings are often unresolved.

This existential truth is terrifying but at the same time, I find there is a sense of beauty and calm in it. I am interested in exploring how we perceive the idea of fragility and its association with gender, form and stereotypes. Why is it looked at a sign of weakness? How can we change this notion? Can we look at it without judgment? Could it symbolize a source of inner strength?



Jso Maeder

INTERMEZZO (locus solus)
2017. Two visits to the artist's storage, on 4 and 11 March 2017. Public mis a nu par un objet.


B°N-BATTERIE
2017. Video installation.



B°N-BATTERIE. amuse-um/TRICKSTER’S TANK

„We are getting rid of ownership“ - John Cage, „Silence“

The trickster, showing up like sort of keeper of the gap as far as he widens out a line normally/normatively marking a dualities’ explicit distinction/discrimination, that appearingly determines and legitimises a difference between two positions like also hierarchic classification (true/contingent, active/passive, dominant/submitted to etc.), to a proper area in between (thus: a gap), compromising/corrupting these positions and so far the ‚system’ of segregations establishing them as obligatory rules valid by its law/language.

Therefore, like a dissimilation by not correctly choosing a position but taking the gap, the trickster breaks the dialectic matrix of a historiography basically reflecting differences as functions of volition and, by consequence, a notion of rationalism of decision making character, whose logics always justify that some corpus has/is to rule: a fix scheme of continiouity or change in an antagonistic scenario, succession or revolving replacement regarding dominant positions as given by an abstract order within rulers/winners and victims/loosers (reproduced in terms of ‚culture & science‘ by modern disciplinarity in theory like economics as a referential construction of social efficiency). So an agent provocateur, if on purpose or not, disobidient and without respect in a way of not reaching any given part in such dispositions, one hardly can localise the trickster’s ambitions or motivations.

Like an analog concept of dis-sense and an incongruousness under that aspect of being regardless of culturally prevalent principles/the institution’s régimentality, his trouble making behaviour/inter-actement is morelike similar to a setting/display like the one of bricolage’s (a way of disobidience in/through matters of knowledge in comparison to the ingenieur/professional standards): what is brought together/assembled and taking place in a combination, is not functionally predefined by controlling instances nor can consequently become conclusion of this kind - there’s more the occasion/opportunity than a goal in the bricoleurs parapractice, a non-repetitve making of also temporally, not a stepwise efficient development from a to b, or a specific sense that predetermines logically the actions, which also and finally means that they remain conflicting as they cannot automatically be assumed as useful being connected with an intentionally positive assertion.

Text: Jso Maeder



Aya Momose

Lesson (Japanese)
2015. Video, HD, 7′16″, looped.



Employing theatrical techniques, Momose often depicts situations in which voices and bodies diverge, or departures from stated intentions, to generate new shades of meaning. In this work, in the bottom of the screen, there is a Japanese written with a roman character / pronunciation and English translation distorted as an “(fictional) Educational Video for Japanese Language Learners”. The sign language is false after all, the definition and the context which the gesture and the voice (sound) sends becomes separated eventually. The separation is suddenly broad between the expression on her face and the voice, and the parole subjective becomes ambiguity / multiple. Here, there’s a fight for ethnicity and the language, between the sorrow and the grievously of the oppressed / enforced, and the cruelty and deception by the oppressing / enforcing. Beyond its non-expression mask, there’s an alternation theater made by their change of the voice’s intonation.


To Cuddle a Goat, a Poor Grammar Exercise
2016. Single channel video, HD, 13′50″.



Distinguished by its adroit ability to overturn the link between voice and body, Momose’s works have dealt with misunderstandings and discrepancies associated with communication, and reversals in the relationship. In the recent work, To Cuddle a Goat, a Poor Grammar Exercise, which includes scenes filmed in Mongolia, she explores different approach to the previous, and expresses the ambiguous nature of its subjects and the uncertainty of relationships with others. The work implies the oppressed subjects and bodies in the history beyond any boundaries.



Saman Anabel Sarabi & Josefine Reisch

How to sing in the midst of the capitalization of art: the desirable table of Josefine. An orientation device
2017. Installation, table, cloth.



Saman Anabel Sarabi and Josefine Reisch have drafted their own orientation device to orient themselves through the cliffs and institutions, waters and archives, mountains and walls, cities and channels, forests and schools, - finally through the horizontalities and flatnesses of 2017. Extending, stretching and flipping the semi-autobiographical short story of Franz Kafka titled Josefine die Sängerin oder das Volk der Mäuse they use their rather specific orientation device to articulate questions on the autonomy of art in our time within which the capitalization of art has been already fully articulated. Through the perspective and voice of Josefine and with the help of her device they will put urgent questions on the table in the near future, starting at Corner College on 24 February 2017.

Doors open 16:30h

17:00h Screening and artist talk by Aya Momose, followed by a discussion between Aya Momose, co-curator Miwa Negoro and the audience.
Japanese artist Aya Momose will screen Exchange Diary (2015-; 48 min), made in collaboration with Korean artist Im Heung-soon.

19:00h Discussion between the artists Robert Estermann, Jakob Jakobsen, Jso Maeder, Saman Anabel Sarabi & Josefine Reisch and the curators Dimitrina Sevova and Alan Roth.

This event is part of the exhibition project Theorem 4. Aesthetic Agency and the Practices of Autonomy. Part II: Der Prozess / The Trial.


Aya Momose

Exchange Diary
2015-. Video, HD, 48′09″. In collaboration with Im Heung-soon.

Taking the form of a visual diary, Exchange Diary is a collection of short films recorded and exchanged by two artists over a year, using a unique way in which each artist filmed a short video and sent it to their collaborator who then added their own narration based on their impressions of the visual images. This work incorporates each artist’s personal interpretation of the images combining the differences and similarities of their cultural, social and political values.

Initially, each artist shot a short video of their everyday lives or a place they had visited, and then sent the video to their collaborator. The other artist then watched the video, and added their own narration based on their impressions of the visual images. This artwork incorporates each artist’s personal interpretation of the images combining the differences and similarities of their cultural, social and political values.

Following the screening, Momose will introduce her artistic practices dealing with the issue related to one’s body and voice, including Lesson (Japanese).

The Curatorial Reading Group is a monthly reading session, a platform for contextualizing curatorial approaches and discourse through a continuous series of readings and discussions. Under the theme of ‘Curating, the Curatorial, and the Notion of Time,’ each session of the first season focuses on a selected text from theory to artistic practice.

This upcoming second session we will read the essay Time and Matter by Jean-François Lyotard, which was part of his input into his philosophical seminar following his landmark exhibition at Centre Pompidou in Paris in 1985, Les Immatériaux, and reflects on the philosophical ideas behind that exhibition. The exhibition inspired an entire generation of relational aesthetics, both curators and artists, from Nicolas Bourriaud to Jens Hoffmann, from Philippe Parreno to Pierre Huyghe, as well as the post-digital discourse and new media art context, with theoreticians and curators like Andreas Boeckmann and Yuk Hui.

You can download the text from here. If you are interested in joining our reading session, it is recommended that you to read it before.



As additional reading further contextualizing Lyotard's text, we recommend the short essay by John Rajchman, Les Immatériaux or How to Construct the History of Exhibitions, Tate Papers No.12 (Landmark Exhibitions Issue)
http://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/tate-papers/12/les-immateriaux-or-how-to-construct-the-history-of-exhibitions

From John Rajchman's text:
“Les Immatériaux was a ‘presentation of ideas’ in the specific sense of ‘presentation’ and ‘idea’ which Lyotard was trying to articulate at the time. It thus linked to another striking aspect of Lyotard’s curatorial experiment – the role and nature of accompanying research, or the role of ‘ideas’ and their ‘address’ in the style of philosophical teaching then current in Paris. With Les Immatériaux, the philosophical seminar would enter into the context of museum research, creating new relations which Lyotard would later evoke in his account of the experience. In the ‘open’ seminar, he would present ideas put forward in a suggestive philosophical text called Time and Matter, later published in a collection of essays entitled The Inhuman. The essay makes interesting reading today, in light of the current interest in exhibitions: in it, Lyotard sets out the larger philosophical ‘idea’ he hoped to ‘present’ through Les Immatériaux. What becomes clear is that Lyotard’s title concept of ‘immateriality’ was different from that of the ‘dematerialisation of art’ associated with the presentation of ideas in what came to be called ‘conceptual art’, and, in particular, ‘institutional critique’. The question thus arises of how this idea and this exhibition are related to that earlier ‘conceptual’ moment in the ‘dramatisation of information’, when the whole idea of the exhibition (or ‘presentation’) was rethought in a manner often opposed to a certain kind of Kantian aestheticism.”




An interview with the philosopher by Bernard Blistène published in Flash Art on the occasion of the exhibition in 1985 provides further background to the thinking behind the exhibition.

And Yuk Hui talks about the updated context of Les immatériaux in the post-digital discourse:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13EdYtfmJ0A

For the March session we propose to collectively select a text, possibly from the book 30 years after Les Immatériaux by Yuk Hui and Andreas Broeckmann.



This book features a previously unpublished report by Jean-François Lyotard on the conception of Les Immatériaux and its relation to postmodernity. Reviewing the historical significance of the exhibition, his text is accompanied by twelve contemporary meditations. The philosophers, art historians, and artists analyse this important moment in the history of media and theory, and reflect on the new material conditions brought about by digital technologies in the last 30 years.

Texts by Daniel Birnbaum, Jean-Louis Boissier, Andreas Broeckmann, Thierry Dufrêne, Francesca Gallo, Charlie Gere, Antony Hudek, Yuk Hui, Jean-François Lyotard, Robin Mackay, Anne Elisabeth Sejten, Bernard Stiegler, and Sven-Olov Wallenstein.

18:30h: Doors open

A temporary video installation of The Judgment by Kosta Tonev will be on display all evening.

19:00h: Presentation by Kosta Tonev, and discussion with the artist




Kosta Tonev

The Judgment
2011, dual-channel video, 4 min 44 sec.

The video tells the story of a police roadblock. An artist has illegally appropriated the object transforming it into an exhibition piece. Shortly thereafter a police team enter the gallery where it is on display, and repossess it.
The first screen of the video installation presents the story as seen through the eyes of the cleaning lady who was the sole witness of the event. In the second, a group of actors impersonate the characters of her story.


The Judgment
2011, 2-Kanal-Videoinstallation, 4 Min 44 Sek.

Das Video erzählt die Geschichte eines Gegenstandes. Ein Künstler stiehlt eine Scherensperre von der Polizei und stellt sie danach in einer Galerie aus. Eines Tages wird die Putzfrau der Galerie von einer Gruppe von PolizistInnen überrascht, die ihre Scherensperre zurückfordern.
Im ersten Kanal dieser Videoinstallation erzählt die Putzfrau von dem Ereignis. Im zweiten werden die Personen aus ihrer Erzählung von SchauspielerInnen dargestellt.


This event is part of the exhibition project Theorem 4. Aesthetic Agency and the Practices of Autonomy. Part II: Der Prozess / The Trial.

INTERMEZZO (locus solus), in which the audience is invited to a public visit of Jso Maeder's storage to select a few wrapped pieces or parts of installations, based on their wrapped shape, without seeing them. They will then be transported to Corner College for a public mise a nu par un objet.

14.00h: Meet at Bhf. Oerlikon, bus stop 62 direction “Schwamendingerplatz”, or
14.15h: Werkerei Schwamendingen, Luegislandstr. 105, 8051 ZH (Eingang Halle)
17.30h: Corner College (le public mis a nu par un objet)

This event is part of the exhibition project Theorem 4. Aesthetic Agency and the Practices of Autonomy. Part II: Der Prozess / The Trial.

Zine – to March, Clandestine Life of the BoycottGiiirls! 2017

Mit Beiträgen von / With contributions by
Tonjaschja Adler, Madeleine Amsler, Ariane Andereggen, Nicole Bachmann, Martina Baldinger, Mirjam Bayerdörfer, Marina Belobrovaja, Sofia Bempeza, Denise Bertschi, Ursula Biemann, Klara Borbély, Johanna Bruckner, Patricia Bucher, Sarah Burger, Françoise Caraco, Bettina Carl, Delphine Chapuis Schmitz, Teresa Chen, data | Auftrag für parasitäre* Gastarbeit, Brigitte Dätwyler, Kadiatou Diallo, Bettina Diel, Mo Diener, Quynh Dong, Marianne Engel, Klodin Erb, Anne-Laure Franchette, Anna Francke, Ipek Füsun, Monica Germann, Clare Goodwin, Co Gründler, Gabriela Gründler, Sabine Hagmann, Marianne Halter, Andrea Heller, Samia Henni, Seda Hepsev, Anke Hoffmann, Cathérine Hug, Patricia Jacomella, Monica Ursina Jäger, Sophie Jung, Anastasia Katsidis, Verica Kovacevska, Isabelle Krieg, Sandra Kühne, Georgette Maag, Julia Marti, Federica Martini & Petra Elena Köhle, Angela Marzullo, Maya Minder, Rayelle Niemann, Caroline Palla, Ursula Palla, Katherine Patiño Miranda, Leila Peacock, Cora Piantoni, Annaïk Lou Pitteloud , Maria Pomiansky, Elodie Pong, Isabel Reiss, Marion Ritzmann, Ana Roldán, Aoife Rosenmeyer, Dorothea Rust, Margit Säde, Saman Anabel Sarabi, Julie Sas, Lisa Schiess, Annette Sense, Dimitrina Sevova, Francisca Silva, Veronika Spierenburg, Vreni Spieser, Claudia Spinelli, Marion Strunk, Milva Stutz, Una Szeemann, Lena Maria Thüring, Yota Tsotra, Jana Vanecek, Anne Käthi Wehrli, Nives Widauer, Martina-Sofie Wildberger, Angela Wittwer, Sophie Yerly.

Konzept und Realisierung / Concept and realization: Nadja Baldini, Dimitrina Sevova, Tanja Trampe

Herausgegeben von / Published by Corner College Press

[English below]
Vor dem Hintergrund der gegenwärtigen politischen Lage und in Solidarität mit den weltweiten Protesten von Frauen gegen Sexismus, Rassismus, Gewalt, Homophobie, religiöse Intoleranz, Klimawandel und ökologische Ungleichheit haben wir Künstlerinnen und Theoretikerinnen eingeladen, je einen A4-Druckbogen Querformat (bzw. zwei A5-Seiten Hochformat) beizutragen, Text oder Bild/Zeichnung, schwarz-weiss.

Veranstaltung im Corner College am 8. März um 20:00h, mit einer Vorschau-Slideshow der Druckbogen des Zines, und DJ-Sets von Monica Germann und DJ Sweatproducer. Die Einnahmen von der Bar gehen an die Druckkosten.

DJ Sweatproducer:
Strassengeräusche, Haushaltslärm, Trompeterinnen in den Wohnungen.
Das Denken und die Gefühle scheinen jetzt schon zu laut zu dröhnen, Hauswänden und Böden zittern und knacken.
Gebüsch im Wind.
Schimpfen durchs Fenster hinaus, Lieder, Gedichte und furiose Reden, dringen zu den Nachbarinnen hoch.
Durch die Luft, so dominant, man hört es, schon den kleinsten Mucks!

Zine-Vernissage und Auktion am 1. Mai 2017 im Corner College.

[Deutsch oben]
Against the background of the current political situation and in solidarity with the worldwide protests of women against sexism, racism, violence, homophobia, religious intolerance, climate change and ecological inequality, we invited artists and theoreticians to contribute one A4 landscape format spread each (or two pages A5 portrait format), either text or image/drawing, black and white. The income from the bar will go towards the printing costs.

Event at Corner College on 8 March at 20:00h, with a pre-launch slideshow of the spreads of the zine and DJ sets by Monica Germann and DJ Sweatproducer.

DJ Sweatproducer:
Street sounds, household noise, women trumpetists in the apartments.
The thinking and feelings seem already now to buzz, as house walls and floors shake and crash.
Bushes in the wind.
Railing out the window, songs, poems and furious speeches reach the neighbors upstairs.
Through air, so dominant, one can hear it, even the slightest sound!

Zine release and auction on 1 May 2017 at Corner College.

Talk organized by the Postgraduate Programme in Curating CAS/MAS ZHdK in collaboration with Corner College.

Marc Streit is currently the associate artistic director at Tanzhaus Zürich and founder of zürich moves! festival for contemporary arts practice in performing arts. As freelance curator he has mandates for various institutions in Europe and the US. He is an alumnus of the Postgraduate Programme in Curating.

The current manifestations of contemporary dance and its fringe areas build global bridges through the physical, aesthetic and idiosyncratic interpretation as well as the visualization of socially relevant topics. Contemporary dance inspires and is inspired and often calls for dialogue beyond the physical performance.

http://www.zurichmoves.com
http://www.tanzhaus-zuerich.ch

This event on the on-curating mailing archive: http://us4.campaign-archive2.com/?u=97fd3828d94e99dfeceaa8b3b&id=04632005d8

INTERMEZZO (locus solus), in which the audience is invited to a public visit of Jso Maeder's storage to select a few wrapped pieces or parts of installations, based on their wrapped shape, without seeing them. They will then be transported to Corner College for a public mise a nu par un objet.

14.00h: Meet at Bhf. Oerlikon, bus stop 62 direction “Schwamendingerplatz”, or
14.15h: Werkerei Schwamendingen, Luegislandstr. 105, 8051 ZH (Eingang Halle)
17.30h: Corner College (le public mis a nu par un objet)

This event is part of the exhibition project Theorem 4. Aesthetic Agency and the Practices of Autonomy. Part II: Der Prozess / The Trial.

Talk organized by the Postgraduate Programme in Curating CAS/MAS ZHdK in collaboration with Corner College.

On March 17, Tenzing Barshee's talk at the Postgraduate Programme will discuss and compare the following projects: On March 23, the exhibition Der Verdienst. 2014-2017 will open at the project space Oracle in Berlin. It’s a follow-up project to an exhibition titled Le Mérite. 2014-2016, which happened last October in Paris. The two exhibitions will resemble and question each other. Le Mérite reflected on the adolescence of power—how authority is claimed and in which formats it is established—while the individual experiences trauma collectively. There was a focus on a couple of polemic motifs such as construction, fabrication and abstraction by example of written, published and authored works. Der Verdienst will mimick Le Mérite. Le Mérite was afraid that Der Verdienst might happen. The first project was all about testing limits. The second one tries to draw the line.

Der Verdienst. 2014-2017 features the work of Carla Accardi, Andrea Büttner, Angeletti/Rossetti, Alexia Cayre, Paul Collins, Timothy Davies, Buck Ellison, Marina Faust, Rochelle Feinstein, Philipp Friedrich, Heike-Karin Föll, Deanna Havas, Samuel Jeffery, Matthew Lutz Kinoy, R. B. Kitaj, Jean Leclercq, Justin Lieberman, August Macke, Luigi Ontani, Kirsten Pieroth, Nicolas Roggy, Aura Rosenberg, Emanuel Rossetti, Salvo, Ben Schumacher, Lucie Stahl, Studio for Propositional Cinema, Student Art Collective, Mitchell Syrop, Lilli Thießen, Astrid Wagner, Genichiro Yagyu, Min Yoon, HP Zimmer a.o.
Oracle, Joachimsthaler Straße 14, 10719 Berlin, oracle@theoracle.works, open by appointment

Last year, Tenzing Barshee curated a two-person exhibition with Anne Speier and Judy Fiskin at wellwellwell, Applied Arts University Vienna, and the exhibition Le Mérite. 2014-2016 at Treize in Paris. He co-curated Rochelle Feinstein's exhibition In Anticipation of Women's History Month with Fabrice Stroun for Centre d'Art Genève, the group show Passo Dopo Passo with Molly Everett and Dorota Michalska for Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Torino, and Margaret Honda's exhibition An Answer to 'Sculptures' with Fanny Gonella for Künstlerhaus Bremen. He's a regular contributor to Spike and Mousse magazine and a columnist for Starship magazine. He graduated the Postgraduate Programme in Curating in 2014.

This event on the Curating mailing archive: http://us4.campaign-archive2.com/?u=97fd3828d94e99dfeceaa8b3b&id=019d785630&e=614f2be470

Celebrating high times on a Sunday afternoon with a small reading out of the book Josefine, a special high time music set, some tea and gin. high times at Corner College: http://www.hightimepublishers.com

This event is part of the exhibition project Theorem 4. Aesthetic Agency and the Practices of Autonomy. Part II: Der Prozess / The Trial.

Corner College, 01 April - 6 May 2017

Opening on Saturday, 01 April, 16:30h

17:00h Discussion between Uriel Orlow and TJ Demos

You can find here and read an interview with Uriel Orlow by Dimitrina Sevova in the context of the exhibition (also printable as PDF 3.65MB)

Opening Hours / Öffnungszeiten
Wed/Fri 15:00h – 18:00h
Thu 16:00h – 19:00h
or by appointment (+41-79-792 77 44)
Additionally open on Saturday, 6 May, from 14:00h to 18:00h


[English below]

In seiner Ausstellung im Corner College betrachtet Uriel Orlow die botanische Welt als Bühne für Geschichte und Politik im Allgemeinen. Die gezeigten Arbeiten wurden in den letzten zwei Jahren entwickelt und befassen sich mit dem Vermächtnis der botanischen Forschungsexpeditionen, Pflanzenmigration, Blumendiplomatie und botanischem Nationalismus aus dem doppelten Blickwinkel Südafrikas und Europas.

Die in der Ausstellung gezeigten Arbeiten sind Teil von Uriel Orlows laufendem Rechercheprojekt Theatrum Botanicum. Das Projekt sieht Pflanzen nicht einzig als passive Objekte der Natur, des ästhetischen Genusses, der Klassifizierung, der Bewirtschaftung oder des Naturschutzes; sondern sowohl als Zeugen als auch als Akteure der Geschichte, als dynamische Agenten, die Natur und Menschen, Tradition und Modernität verbinden, und das über unterschiedliche Geographien, Geschichten und Wissenssystemen hinweg, mit heilenden, spirituellen und ökonomischen Kräften.


[Deutsch oben]

In his exhibition at Corner College Uriel Orlow looks to the botanical world as a stage of history and politics at large. The work in the exhibition was developed over the last two years and engages with the legacies of botanical exploration, plant migration, flower diplomacy and botanical nationalism from the dual vantage points of South Africa and Europe.

***

European colonialism in South Africa – as elsewhere – was both preceded and accompanied by expeditions that aimed at charting the territory and classifying its natural resources, in turn paving the way for occupation and exploitation. 'Newly' discovered plants were often named after the botanist who first described them and eventually classified according to the Linnaean system and its particular European rationality.


What Plants Were Called Before They Had a Name (2016-17) is an audio plant dictionary created from nine indigenous South African languages. Conceived as a surround sound installation, the work serves as an aural repository of local knowledge that was originally passed from generation to generation through oral tradition but was displaced by European writing and nomenclature, which it now confronts in the exhibition space.

Geraniums are never Red (2016-17) revisits the bright red geraniums that trail from the balconies of Swiss chalets and clamber up palm trees in California. Botanically speaking they aren’t geraniums at all–nor are they Swiss or Californian. They are in fact pelargoniums. They were first brought to Europe – and misidentified – after 1652, when the Dutch East India Company established a permanent settlement and a Company Garden at the Cape and started to explore the surrounding flora to bring back new botanical treasures, which apart from pelargoniums included proteas, ericas and many other mainstays of European gardens. By the time the confusion between the two species was resolved, ‘African geraniums’ had been around for 150 years and British commercial growers and gardeners were reluctant to give up the familiar name.

In 1963, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the founding of Kirstenbosch, the national botanical garden of South Africa in Cape Town a series of films were commissioned to document the jubilee celebrations and their ‘national’ dances, pantomimes revisiting the colonial conquest, the visit of international botanists and the history of the botanical garden itself. The films’ cast of botanists and visitors are mostly white and when we see Africans they are engaged in menial labour.

These films have not been seen since 1963 and were found by the artist in boxes in the cellar of the library of the botanical garden. The Fairest Heritage (2016-7) is an attempt to watch these documents today and speak back to the archive. Orlow collaborated with the actor Lindiwe Matshikiza who inhabits and confronts the found footage and its politics of representation, sending up the botanical nationalism and flower-diplomacy of apartheid era South Africa.

Exotics were the pride of European gardeners for a long time. But new species were not just brought to Europe to satisfy horticultural demand and other colonial economic interests. Some plants also arrived as stowaways; seeds in animal feed or other shipments. The consequences of newly introduced species were not always predictable and in recent decades botanists have highlighted the threat of some of these new-arrivals to local biodiversity. A number of national organisations deal with the problem of invasive neophytes producing information campaigns and so-called blacklists of exotics that are illegal and need to be eradicated. The management of ‘invasive aliens’ and the language accompanying it produces new forms of botanical nationalism that inadvertently mirror public discourse on human migration. The series of posters Blacklisted (Was wir durch die Blume sagen) re-mixes information gathered from the Zurich office for the control of neophytes and uses quotes from literature and websites across Switzerland.

***

The work in this exhibition is part of Uriel Orlow's ongoing research entitled Theatrum Botanicum. The project considers plants not solely as passive objects of nature, aesthetic pleasure, classification, cultivation or conservation; but as both witnesses and actors in history and as dynamic agents linking nature and humans, tradition and modernity– across different geographies, histories and systems of knowledge, with curative, spiritual and economic powers.


Mit der freundlichen Unterstützung der Stiftung Erna und Curt Burgauer, der Georges und Jenny Bloch Stiftung, und der Ernst Göhner Stiftung.

This talk is concerned with histories of South African colonial formations featuring gardens and plants. It is grounded in empirical research of multispecies histories in the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden.

Plants have featured prominently in imaginations and conceptualisations of South Africa throughout the colonial, apartheid and post-apartheid era. In the late 19th century, white settlers appropriated the indigenous flora as a marker of identity. The settler elite regarded the cultivation of scientific and aesthetic appreciation of the vegetation as a tool for promoting civilisation and patriotism. This occurred within the larger discourse of nature conservation, which served as a legitimisation of white land appropriation, forced removals and prohibition of subsistence land use by Africans and slave-descendants.

In 1913, the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden was established in Cape Town. Subsequently, Kirstenbosch evolved as the centre of a network of regional botanical gardens spread throughout the country. In 2004, UNESCO listed Kirstenbosch as a natural World Heritage Site and it currently attracts over one million visitors per year. Through plant collecting, design and what I term “monumental gardening”, Kirstenbosch gave rise to South African colonial and imperial formations. These activities expressed the aspirations of the Cape colonial elite and evolved in the context of both rising South African settler nationalism and British imperialism. In 1948, the Nationalist Party came to power and apartheid became the official state policy. Parallel to the rise of local and international criticism of apartheid, the South African state began to use Kirstenbosch as a stage for political spectacles, deploying botanists as well as plants themselves as ambassadors in what I call “floral diplomacy”. Standing in a genealogy of empire exhibitions and flower shows, plants from Kirstenbosch were displayed internationally. The state also invited international botanists to South Africa in an attempt to impose a positive image of South Africa to them. The apartheid state deployed flowers and gardens because they were widely regarded as beautiful and apolitical – an understanding that needed to be continuously reproduced and in the late 1980s was challenged by activists and artists opposed to apartheid. The South African National Botanical Gardens have continued to thrive in the post-apartheid era. They have been reframed as tourism destinations and sites of post-apartheid nation building. However, they have been continuing to reproduce “colonial presents” (D. Gregory, The Colonial Present, 2004) and “occluded histories of empire” (A.-L. Stoler, Duress, 2016).

The talk is concerned with such histories of South African colonial formations. They are addressed from a multispecies perspective, which acknowledges not only humans but also other living beings, in particular plants, as historical actors and witnesses. It does so by drawing on and combining a range of methods, including historiography, multispecies ethnography, critical plant studies, plant sciences, and floriography (the reading and writing with flowers).

This event is part of the personal exhibition of Uriel Orlow at Corner College, Geraniums Are Never Red.

[English below]

Der israelische Kurator Joshua Simon untersucht in seinem Vortrag “The Great Soviet Encyclopedia: Communism and The Dividual“ ein Poster von Eliezer Lissitzky (1890-1941), das der russisch-jüdische Künstler 1929 für die Eröffnung einer Ausstellung im Gewerbemuseum Zürich gestaltet hat. Es widerspiegelt den inszenierten Enthusiasmus über die forcierte Industrialisierung der Sowjetunion und die damit einhergehende veränderte Bedeutung des Individuums. Simon sieht Parallelen zu heutigen Formen von Subjektivität, was er auch in einem aktuellen Projekt untersucht hat: Die von ihm betreute Ausstellungsreihe „The Kids Want Communism“ (2016/17) öffnet den Blick auf das utopische Potenzial des Kommunismus, gerade auch in Israel, wo die sozialistischen Staats- und Gesellschaftstraditionen durch Globalisierung und Privatisierung verschüttet wurden.

Der Vortrag findet in englischer Sprache statt. Einführung: Dorothee Richter, Leiterin des „Postgraduate Programme in Curating“ an der Zürcher Hochschule der Künste (ZHdK).

Joshua Simon ist Autor, Filmemacher und Direktor des MoBY-Museums in Bat Yam. Er ist Mitbegründer von „Maayan Publishing“ in Tel Aviv, eines Magazins für Dichtung, Literatur und Ideen. Er ist Autor von „Neomaterialism“ (Sternberg Press, 2013) und Herausgeber von „Ruti Sela: For The Record“ (Archive Books, 2015). In letzter Zeit kuratierte er die Ausstellungen “Factory Fetish” in Melbourne und „Roee Rosen: Group Exhibition“ im Tel Aviv Museum. Er hat am renommierten Londoner Goldsmiths College ein Postgraduiertenstudium in „Curatorial Knowledge“ absolviert.


[Deutsch siehe oben]

The entry point for this talk is the Russian Exhibition which took place at the Museum of Applied Arts in Zurich (Marc-April 1929), and especially its poster, designed by Eliezer Lissitzky (1890-1941). The unique design of this poster by Lissitzky stands between avant garde montage and socialist realism with its inflated portraits and staged enthusiasm. These aesthetic attributes correlate with the shifting economic realities of the time with the move from the NEP to shockwork methods of the Soviet five year plan. This poster comes from a specific moment in Soviet industrialization which was accompanied by a new subjectivity as well. That moment seems to inform our moment as well.Considering this poster opens up a discussion on contemporary forms of subjectivity under current modes of production and distribution of computerized networks. In his talk, Joshua Simon will present The Kids Want Communism, a yearlong program of exhibitions marking 99 years since the October Revolution, which he initiated in collaboration with State of Concept Athens, Free/Slow University of Warsaw, Tranzit Prague, Skuc gallery in Ljubljana, the Visual Culture Research Center in Kiev, Westspace Melbourne, and MoBY-Museums of Bat Yam. The talk will outline how the communist horizon and real existing socialism can inform our understanding of the current social and cultural, political, and economic realities as we are facing the implosion of the neoliberal order.

The talk is a cooperation of Onamut and Postgraduate Programme in Curating, ZHdK and Corner College.

Buchvernissage
Christoph Kappeler
Josef Maria Schröder

Edition Patrick Frey

Mit Texten von
Christoph Kappeler, Ulrich Kinder, Michael T. Ricker
Gestaltung
Hi, Megi Zumstein, Claudio Barandun
Gebunden, 152 Seiten, 153 Farbabbildungen
17 × 24 cm
ISBN Nummer: 978-3-906803-37-1
Sprache: Englisch

Einzelheiten zum Buch siehe bei Edition Patrick Frey.

[English below]

PRESENT PROGRESSIVE

Corner College, Zürich
Kuratiert von peekaboo! (Lisa Biedlingmaier & Bernadette Wolbring)

Teilnehmende KünstlerInnen: Abel Auer (DE), Lisa Biedlingmaier (CH / DE), June Crespo (ES / NL), Ulrika Jäger (DE), Bernadette Wolbring (DE / SE)

Eröffnung Samstag, 13. Mai 2017, 19:00h
Finissage Samstag, 10. Juni 2017, 17:00h

Zusätzliche Veranstaltungen siehe unten.

Samstag, 13. Mai - Samstag, 10. Juni 2017

Öffnungszeiten
Mi: 15:00h - 18:00h
Do/Fr: 17:00h - 19:00h

Present Progressive; Zeitform, Englisch

Das Present Progressive ist eine Verlaufsform der Gegenwart. Dieses Tempus kann sich sowohl auf die Gegenwart als auch auf die Zukunft beziehen: Zum einen wird das Present Progressive für Handlungen, die jetzt gerade stattfinden, verwendet, zum anderen für sich ändernde Situationen und bereits vereinbarte Handlungen in der Zukunft. Dabei kommen vor allem Verben zum Einsatz, die einen Plan oder eine Bewegung von einem Ort oder einer Bedingung zur anderen vermitteln. Das Present Progressive ist eine Zeitform, die es im Deutschen nicht gibt.

peekaboo! präsentiert die Arbeiten von fünf KünstlerInnen, die sich mit Vorstellungen von Zeit und dem Ineinandergreifen von Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft beschäftigen. Recalling, reenacting und rewriting zum Beispiel sind Strategien, die wiederholt eingesetzt werden, um das Gewicht der Geschichte zu verlagern. Die Zeitreise wird als eine Möglichkeit vorgestellt, die Zukunft zu gestalten. Angeregt durch Chris Kraus´ „naive Vorstellung, dass es möglich ist dem Unglücklichsein zu entkommen, indem man einfach den Kanal wechselt“, hebt die Ausstellung Present Progressive die Gleichzeitigkeit von Ereignissen hervor – sei es in Vergangenheit, Gegenwart oder Zukunft.

Das Ausstellungsdesign besteht aus einem genau 68,38 m langen Gewebestreifen, der in Erinnerung ruft, dass es auch andere Vorstellungen von Zeit und zeitlichen Zusammenhängen gibt. Die Maße und die Materialität des Streifens beziehen sich nämlich auf den Teppich von Bayeux (entstanden im 11. Jh., 0,53m × 68,38m). Der Mediävist Peter Czerwinski stellt die These auf, dass im Mittelalter ein anderer Zeitbegriff existiert habe, der im Gegensatz zur heutigen Wahrnehmung der Zeit von einer Simultanität ausgehe (in Gegenwärtigkeit: Simultane Räume und zyklische Zeiten, Formen von Regeneration und Genealogie im Mittelalter, 1993). Kausal zusammenhängende Ereignisse, die in unterschiedlichen Zeitebenen stattfanden, wurden – laut Czerwinski – als gleichzeitig gedacht. Vergangenheit und Gegenwart sind in dieser Zeitvorstellung mithin nicht klar unterscheidbar. Darum werden auch auf dem Teppich von Bayeux Ereignisse, die nicht zeitgleich stattfanden, im selben Raum dargestellt, der lediglich durch Architekturelemente unterteilt wird.




[Deutsch oben]

PRESENT PROGRESSIVE

Corner College, Zurich
curated by peekaboo! (Lisa Biedlingmaier & Bernadette Wolbring)

Participating artists:
Abel Auer (DE), Lisa Biedlingmaier (CH/DE), June Crespo (ES/NL), Ulrika Jäger (DE), Bernadette Wolbring (DE/SE)

Opening Saturday, 13 May 2017, 19:00h
Finissage Saturday, 10 June 2017, 17:00h

Additional events see below.

Saturday, 13 May - Saturday, 10 June 2017

Opening hours
Mi: 15:00h - 18:00h
Do/Fr: 17:00h - 19:00h

­Present Progressive, tense, English

This tense is used to suggest either the present or the future. It can indicate that an action is going to happen in the future, especially with verbs that convey the idea of a plan or a movement from one place or condition to another.


peekaboo! presents the work of five artists that are dealing with perceptions of time and how past, present and future are interconnected. Strategies of recalling, reenacting and rewriting are applied in order to shift the weight of history. Travelling in time is presented as a way of shaping the future. Encouraged by Chris Kraus’s “naive recognition that it might be possible to escape from unhappiness just by changing the channel,” the show highlights the simultaneity of events – be it in the past, present or future.

The exhibition design consists of a 68.38m long strip of fabric running through the space to evoke a different idea of how time can be perceived. The strip’s measurements and materiality refer to the Bayeux Tapestry (0.53m × 68.38m). The German medievalist Peter Czerwinski claims that in the Middle Ages a different notion of time existed (in Gegenwärtigkeit: Simultane Räume und zyklische Zeiten, Formen von Regeneration und Genealogie im Mittelalter, 1993). In contrast to today’s chronological perception of time, the tapestry – like other medieval works of art – depicts a notion of time that assumes simultaneity. Here past and present are not clearly distinguishable – therefore causally related events are depicted in the same space, separated merely by elements of architecture.

Additional Events

Listening Sessions: RSI 92.3 FM Douala, Cameroon or any other proposals

Friday, 19 May, 5-6 pm
Thursday, 25 May, 5-7 pm
Friday, 26 May, 5-7 pm

“emotion reigns, information governs” is a thematic radio station dedicated to sports, music, and culture.

RSI is an avant-garde radio station featuring sports and cultural content. Created four years ago by Martin Camus Mimb, a renowned sports reporter on the African continent, the station is today the most listened-to radio in Douala, the economic capital of Cameroon. In the unique field of sports, we aim to give listeners a new vision of information, thanks to an experienced team of specialized reporters.

with Lisa Biedlingmaier

Who likes Chicken Curry? Who laughs about blackfacing and Mohamed caricature? Who defines arranged marriages? Who is scared of Indian IT-Workers? Who is involved in colonialism? Who survives? Who votes? Who really cares?

In this talk anthropologist and sociologist Rohit Jain inquires into the making of postcolonial public spaces of Switzerland in the age of de-centralised capitalism.

Informed by ethnographic and artistic research as well as from activist interventions Rohit delves into the unruly archives of forgotten stories, displaced feelings and interrogates the hegemonic machinery of making things und humans un/happen.

Starting from the transformative notion of „structure of feelings“ (Raymond Williams), the talk unravels the affective nature of postcolonial amnesia in Switzerland. On the hand, the resistance against postcolonial amnesia provokes melancholia, anxieties, or anger. On the other hand, to imagine alternative histories and stories allows to affect unruly archives and to unleash a performative power of assembly (Judith Butler).

Rohit Jain is, thus, interested in the conditions of possibilities as well as in the artistic, political and theoretical strategies to develop alternative publics of conviviality and new communities. The presented work, therefore, opens up new avenue for understanding an unacknowledged Swiss history of violence and envisioning a future of reparative justice at the intersection of ethnography, artistic practices and activism.

Rohit Jain is an anthropologist and anti-racism activist based at Zurich and Berne. His current work focuses on the connections between postcolonial archives, the politics of affects and the performative intervention into translocal publics. Rohit has done research and published on the entanglements of racism, humor and anti-PC in TV comedy, on transnational politics of representation among “second generations Indians” as well as on the connection between the Swiss public discourse of Bollywood, yoga and IT and postcolonial anxieties. Recently he has collaborated in artistic research projects on the “An/aesthetics of Suburbia” and on “Swiss Psychotropic Gold” (both at IFCAR Zurich) and on urban citizenship (at Shedhalle Zurich). He is co-founder of “Laugh Up. Stand Up! Antiracist Humor Festival” and of “Salon Bastarde”, a series of postmigrant happenings in Zurich.

The is a guest lecture of the Postgraduate Programme in Curating, ZHdK.

At Kaserneareal in Basel:

ART SPACES II
Hard Hat, Geneva
Corner College, Zurich
Dr. Kuckucks Labrador, Basel
DEPO, Istanbul

The discussion is part of the broader three-day event organized by Pro Helvetia to present the Cahiers d'Artistes. For Corner College, Dimitrina Sevova and Alan Roth are taking part.

The Cahiers d’Artistes will be presented throughout the week at LIVING ROOM, a temporary space conceived as a place for discovering emerging Swiss artists, an open platform for discussion as well as a meeting point for the public. Pro Helvetia will host a series of conversations with national and international guests on a range of subjects related to its activities in the visual arts.

http://cahiers.ch/event/

This talk is based on my current and ongoing project on Decolonisation and the Scopic Regime.

Without falling into these traps in the quest towards engaging with the call towards decolonisation in South Africa’s education institutions, how does one pose questions or develop responses that reflect on how have we taken ownership of the ideological space that creative production occupies in the popular imagination in the face of the complexities of and representing a new post colonial if not a decolonised reality. Especially in the context of an arts space that is within the embattled terrain of the university, and still produce genuine platforms for reflection and imagination, contigent of the political and moral positions of any reflection.

Achille Mbembe in African Modes of Self Writing points out the sets of dogmas that seem to pass for African discourse in both its political and cultural dimensions, as lacking of historical criticism… and this lack reduces the discourse to three rituals:

the first ritual contradicts and refutes Western definitions of Africa and Africans by pointing out the falsehoods and bad faith they presuppose. The second denounces what the West has done (and continues to do) to Africa in the name of these definitions. The third provides so-called proofs which, by disqualifying the West’s fictional representations of Africa and refuting its claim to have a monopoly on the expression of the human in general, are supposed to open up a space in which Africans can finally narrate their own fables (self-definition) in a voice that cannot be imitated because it is authentically their own.

These rituals of discourse according to Mbembe reduce an extraordinary history to three tragic acts: slavery, colonization, and apartheid - to which globalization as a form of neo-colonisation is being added.

Through Decolonisation and the Scopic Regime the objective for me has been one of developing space that is relevant in this environment and brought together various people and their ideas that poses questions on aspects of the question at hand: the development of critical, self-reflexive, locally specific responses to knowledge production and dissemination in all its forms.

In den Lebensmitteln drin geht es zu und her wie in einer Stadt
Anne Käthi Wehrli
Corner College Press, 2016

17:30h Türöffnung
18:30h Lesung

Der Titel dieser Publikation stammt aus einem Gedicht, enstanden bei der Arbeit an einem Beitrag, der Performance "These we have tried …", für den Anlass "Alice Toklas reads her famous hashish fudge recipe", der 2015 in Wien stattfand. In dieser Performance geht es um die Zubereitung von Fudge und um das berühmte Haschisch Fudge Rezept von Alice Toklas, um Hausfrauen, Sprache, Chemie, Zufall und feine Unterschiede. Ein Teil daraus findet sich in dieser Publikation.

Auch weitere Beiträge dieses Buchs kamen schon an anderen Orten und in anderen Formaten vor.

In Fanzines, Ausstellungen, Radiosendungen, Zeichnungen an Performances, Gedichte als Teil von Texten. Die Zeichnungen und Collagen sind aus der Zeit von ca. 1993-2016. Zusammen mit den Texten die alle neueren Datums sind, sind sie jetzt für dieses Buch neu versammelt worden.

Ein Ausstellungsprojekt von Lucie Kolb

08.07. 16:00h Opening
17.07. 20:00h Bildungsfernsehen #1: «The Question of Sovereignty», D103 pt. 7, Society and social science: a foundation course (D103) [Prof. Stuart Hall], Open University, UK, 1990/91
24.07. 20:00h Bildungsfernsehen #2: «The Politics of Equal Opportunity», D103 pt. 8, ibid.
29.07. 20:00h Bildungsfernsehen #3: «Television, Images, Messages and Ideologies», D103 pt. 9, ibid.

Weitere Veranstaltungen siehe unten.

Opening Hours // Öffnungszeiten
Thu/Fri/Sat 16:00h–19:00h

08 - 29 July 2017


Ich habe mir kürzlich die Science-Fiction-Serie «The 100» angesehen. Eigentlich nicht die Serie, sondern bloss die Storyline von Clarke und Lexa: Zwei Teenagerinnen, die in einer postapokalyptischen Welt rivalisierende Gemeinschaften anführen. In der siebten Folge der dritten Staffel stirbt Lexa kurz nachdem sie mit Clarke im Bett gelandet ist – ein Moment der über zwei Staffeln aufgebaut wurde.

Auf Twitter wird Lexas Tod unter dem Tag #lesbiandeathtrope diskutiert: Das Vorantreiben einer Geschichte durch den Tod eines lesbischen Charakters wird nicht akzeptiert. Die Fans lancieren eine Kampagne in deren Verlauf nicht nur eine Reihe von Drehbuchautor_innen zur Unterzeichnung eines offenen Briefs gewonnen werden, Geld für LGBT-Zwecke gesammelt wird, sondern den Produzenten der Serie auch Todesdrohungen erreichen. Dieser reagiert mit einer offiziellen Entschuldigung. Was zeigt sich hier? Die Macht von Nutzer_innen, die ihr Recht geltend machen, bei der Ausarbeitung einer fiktionalen Geschichte mitzusprechen? Im digitalen Raum verändern sich wirkmächtige Vorstellungen von Autorschaft und Storytelling und machen Platz für Neues. 
Die Fans sind abgetaucht in die Abgründe der Fan Fiction. Sie schreiben eine Geschichte mit Lexa weiter, in der sie lebt und regiert. Die Story ist Teil von «The 100», aber nicht von ihr. Sie isoliert sich nicht, weicht aber von der Serie ab, überzieht sie.

+ Study
«When I think about the way we use the term ‹study›, I think we are comitted to the idea that study is what you do with other people. It’s talking and walking around with other people, working, dancing, suffering, some irreducible convergence of all three, held unter the name of speculative practice. The notion of a rehearsal – being in a kind of workshop, playing in a band, in a jam session, or old men sitting on a porch, or people working together in a factory – there are these various modes of activity. The point of calling it ‹study› is to mark that the incessant and irreversible intellectuality of these activities is already present.»
Fred Moten

Beiträge von Zoran Popović und Jasna Tijardović

Texte von u.a. YGRG, Tyna Fritschy, Stephan Geene, Barbara Kapusta & Cathrin Mayer, Ludovica Parenti, Marion von Osten: http://www.brand-new-life.org/b-n-l/tag/study

Bildungsfernsehen mit Philipp Messner: «Society and Social Science – A Foundation Course» (Stuart Hall, Open University/BBC, 1991)

Screening/Talk «Struggle in New York» 1976 with Zoran Popović und Jasna Tijardović at Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst Zürich (06.07., 19:00h) and Forde Genève (07.07., 19:30h).


The project is part of the Corner College platform Transferences: The Function of the Exhibition and Performative Processes in the Practices of Art – Questions of Participation, initiated by Dimitrina Sevova and Alan Roth.

Bildungsfernsehen #1:

«The Question of Sovereignty», Society and social science: a foundation course (D103) pt. 7. [Prof. Stuart Hall], Open University, UK, 1990/91

Mit einer Einführung von Lucie Kolb und Philipp Messner.

Stuart Hall (1932–2014) war ein Kulturtheoretiker und marxistischer Intellektueller. Seit 1979 wirkte er als Professor für Soziologie an der Open University, einer 1969 gegründeten Fernhochschule, nachdem er zuvor das wegweisende Centre for Cultural Studies an der Universität Birmingham geleitet hatte. Die gezeigte Sendung ist Teil des von Hall konzipierten Einführungskurses «Society and Social Science» der 1991 von der BBC ausgestrahlt wurde. Das Erwachsenenbildungsprogramm stellt den Versuch dar, akademische Fragestellungen über den geschlossenen Kreis der bestehenden Universitäten hinaus zu vermitteln. «The Question of Sovereignty» fragt vor dem Hintergrund der damaligen Integration Grossbritaniens in die Europäische Union nach der Bedeutung des Konzepts der nationalen Souveränität.

Diese Veranstaltung ist Teil von Lucie Kolbs Ausstellung Studium, nicht Kritik.

Bildungsfernsehen #2:

«The Politics of Equal Opportunity», Society and social science: a foundation course (D103) pt. 8. [Prof. Stuart Hall], Open University, UK, 1991

Der Kulturtheoretiker Stuart Hall (1932–2014) wirkte zwischen 1979 und 1997 als Professor für Soziologie an der Open University (OU), einer britischen Fernhochschule, nachdem er zuvor das wegweisende Centre for Cultural Studies an der Universität Birmingham geleitet hatte.

Die Sendung «The Politics of Equal Opportunity» ist Teil des von Hall konzipierten Einführungskurses «Society and Social Science» der von der OU produziert und 1991 von der BBC ausgestrahlt wurde. Das Erwachsenenbildungsprogramm stellt den Versuch dar, akademische Fragestellungen über den geschlossenen Kreis der bestehenden Universitäten hinaus zu vermitteln. Die gezeigt Folge vergleicht Massnahmen zur Organisation von Chancengleichheit in Grossbritannien und den USA.

Vor der Sendung geht Philipp Messner auf Halls Engagement als Autor und Mitherausgeber bei der 1957 gegründeten Zeitschrift «Universities & Left Review» ein, aus der 1960 die äusserst einflussreiche «New Left Review» hervorging, bei der Hall Anfangs ebenfalls als Herausgeber fungierte.

Der Inhalt der beiden Zeitschriften ist frei online zugänglich:
«Universities & Left Review» (1957–59): http://banmarchive.org.uk/collections/ulr/index_frame.htm
«New Left Review» (1960–): https://newleftreview.org/search


Diese Veranstaltung ist Teil von Lucie Kolbs Ausstellung Studium, nicht Kritik.

Bildungsfernsehen #3:

«Television, Images, Messages and Ideologies», Society and social science: a foundation course (D103) pt. 9., Open University, UK, 1991

Der Kulturtheoretiker Stuart Hall (1932–2014) wirkte zwischen 1979 und 1997 als Professor für Soziologie an der Open University (OU), einer britischen Fernhochschule, nachdem er zuvor das wegweisende Centre for Cultural Studies an der Universität Birmingham geleitet hatte.

Die Sendung «Television, Images, Messages and Ideologies» behandelt das Problem der Ideologie am Beispiel britischer Nachrichten- und Unterhaltungssendungen. Sie ist Teil des von Hall konzipierten Einführungskurses «Society and Social Science» der von der OU produziert und 1991 von der BBC ausgestrahlt wurde. Das Erwachsenenbildungsprogramm steht für ein Bemühen, akademische Fragestellungen über den geschlossenen Kreis der bestehenden Universitäten hinaus zu vermitteln.


Diese Veranstaltung ist Teil von Lucie Kolbs Ausstellung Studium, nicht Kritik.

The exhibition is concerned with the production of space or elliptical sense between the three positions and the works on display by Nora Schmidt, Katharina Swoboda, and Kosta Tonev, and to what extent the aesthetic use of research or research creation (lightening of sense) refers to what Jean-Luc Nancy calls the “knowledge of a condition of possibility that gives nothing to know.” It is rather about “the syndrome known as life,” or “the sense of being which calls for more form.”

Curated by Dimitrina Sevova & Alan Roth.

Saturday, 5 - Thursday, 31 August 2017.

Opening: Saturday, 5 August 2017, 17:00h

Finissage: Thursday, 31 August 2017, 19:00h
with, starting 19:30h,
Performative reading Altered State by Nora Schmidt
Lecture-performance Practice as Research – Research as a practice (Video Narratives) by Katharina Swoboda
Lecture-performance Wilfred Wyman by Kosta Tonev

Sunday, 6 August 2017, 16:00h - 19:00h: Guided tour with the curators and Kosta Tonev, with coffee, tea and cake.

Opening Hours
Thu/Fri/Sat: 16:00h - 19:00h
or by appointment



Nora Schmidt

Altered State
2017. Installation and performative reading.

[English below]

Prolog: Alles, was ich während meines Aufenthaltes an jenem Ort tat, war, das Innen mit dem Aussen abzugleichen.
Das, was scheinbar offenbar war, im Negativ zu zeigen. Nahm Mass an den Objekten, die diesen Ort mitbestimmten.
Dass die Oberfläche, die ich zu sein glaubte, die mich umschloss und in welche ich gleichzeitig eindrang, die Form eines Poetischen Faktums annahm…

“[…] Zu unterscheiden ist das poetische Faktum von der poetischen Kunst – die zum Ziel hat, solcher Art Faktum zu produzieren oder zu provozieren oder zu präparieren oder zu isolieren.
Jedes Ereignis, jeder Eindruck, der von sich aus Erregung, Produktion von ungebundener Energie bewirkt, ohne auf ein präzises Bedürfnis, eine unmittelbare Handlung zu zielen, ohne Vorhaben, ein Begehren hervorzurufen (ausser der Bewahrung, Fixierung, Erfassung dieser Erregung selbst) – ist ein poetisches Faktum, Objekt oder Ereignis.”
(Paul Valéry, Cahiers/Hefte: Die vollständige Pléiade-Edition)




[Deutsch oben]

Prologue: Everything I did during my stay in that place was to match up the inside with the outside.
To show what was seemingly obvious, in the negative. Took the measure of objects that contributed to defining this place.
That the surface I believed to be, that enclosed me and into which I penetrated at the same time, took the form of a poetic fact…


“[…] The poetic fact is to be distinguished from poetic art - which has as its aim to produce or to provoke or to prepare or to isolate facts of this kind.
Every event, every impression that of itself effects excitation, production of unbound energy without aiming at a precise necessity, an immediate action, without a plan to evoke a desire (besides the preservation, fixing, capture of the excitation itself) - is a poetic fact, object or event.”
(Paul Valéry, Cahiers/Notebooks)



Katharina Swoboda

Marguerite’s Desires
2017. Site-specific installation, video, archive materials, wallpapers.



Marguerite’s Desires is a video work about French Feminist Marguerite Durand (1864-1936). The work makes a connection between two places founded by Durand: the pet cemetery Cimetière des Chiens and the Bibliothèque Marguerite Durand in Paris. Durand, a former actress at Comédie-Française, became interested in politics after the Congrès féministe international in 1896. She then founded the journal La Fronde (The Sling), a journal solely written and edited by women. Marguerite had a lion, which she lovingly called tiger and which brought her also publicity for her political campaign. In 1899 she founded the pet cemetery Cimetière des chiens in Asnières-sur-Seine, close to Paris. Although an animal lover, she founded the cemetery for purely hygienic reasons. In 1932, she donated her extensive collection of journals and literature to the government, and the Bibliothèque Marguerite Durand was founded. It was the very same place where Durand died in 1936 of a heart attack.




Practice as Research – Research as a practice (Video Narratives)
Lecture-performance (at the finissage on 31 August 2017)

As a strategy, I often use historical, actual or fictive female characters to install a multilayered biopic inside the exhibition. In Marguerite’s Desires, I use the figuration of Marguerite Durand to explore her progressive ideas and their relevance today. My video interact with other material like discourses in cultural theory, press releases or even the exhibition text on the wall. In this sense, the audio-visual fragments, that I produced, are or can be read in an actual and abstract relationship to other texts, videos, photographies, performative elements and events.


This project was supported by Kulturamt der Stadt Graz.



Kosta Tonev

Wilfred Wyman
2014-2017. Object and sound installation, 23′30″.



The project constructs and narrates the life story of a fictional, late-Victorian artist named Wilfred Wyman (1859-1939). Set against the backdrop of real, historical events, Wyman’s life witnessed the developments in post-Darwinian science and their dire consequences. The human body is a recurrent theme in Wyman’s own work, which resonates with the scientific and intellectual discourses of his time. A collection of documents and relics forms a narrative reflecting the intricate relationship between 19th-century biology and the totalitarian ideologies of the 1930s.





The project is part of the Corner College platform Transferences: The Function of the Exhibition and Performative Processes in the Practices of Art – Questions of Participation, initiated by Dimitrina Sevova and Alan Roth.


Mit der freundlichen Unterstützung des Bundeskanzleramts Österreich.

[English below]

Eröffnung: Sonntag, 10. September, 18h-20h
verschiedene performative Settings und Heilungen von post-/kolonialer Amnesie:
DJ Fred Hystère und Nina Bandi (molecular listening session),
Martina Buzzi (golden acupuncture/charming the ghost points) und
Gabriel Flückiger (meditation on pure gold)

Donnerstag, 14. September
Workshop trans-shine mit Gabriel Flückiger: 18h-20h, Anmeldung erforderlich
Rohit Jain und knowbotiq im Gespräch über Swiss Psychotropic Gold und latente Archive, 20h

Finissage: Sonntag, 8. Oktober, 16h-19h
performative Settings und Heilungen von post-/kolonialer Amnesie:
Martina Buzzi (golden acupuncture/charming the ghost points) und
Gabriel Flückiger (meditation on pure gold)

Öffnungszeiten
Do– Sa 16:00h – 19:00h
oder nach Vereinbarung


Detailliertere Infos: corner-college.com und knowbotiq.net/psygold

Seit mehr als drei Jahrhunderten ist der Schweizer Rohstoffhandel Teil von kolonialen, postkolonialen und neoliberalen Verflechtungen. Er ermöglichte sowohl die frühe moderne Industrialisierung als auch die Konstituierung des Finanzplatzes der Schweiz. Er brachte aber auch spezifische ästhetische, affektive und moralische Ökonomien hervor. Der Schweizer Mythos der Neutralität verwandelt die “schmutzigen” Materialitäten und Geschäfte mit den Rohstoffen zu einer opaken und diskreten Form von Technokratie, Sicherheit, Philanthropie und weißer Vorherrschaft.

The Swiss Psychotropic Gold Refining fabuliert über den Rohstoffhandel und das Raffinieren von Gold. Am hochglänzenden, zärtlich schützenden Metall molekularisieren sich die Narrative über Gewalt, Zugriffe auf schwarze Körper, derivative Bereicherungen, psychotrope Energien und wechselseitige Schulden. Das calvinistische Gold durchläuft, einmal gefördert, einen sich wiederholenden Zyklus von Reinigung/Raffinierung, Verarbeitung und Wiedereinschmelzung – es wird aber nie gezeigt. Es eignet sich für jegliche Form von Spurenlöschung und Anonymisierung als auch Heilung von post-/kolonialer Amnesie.

in Zusammenarbeit mit ifcar, Institute for Contemporary Art Research Zurich


[Deutsch siehe oben]

10 September – 8 October 2017

Opening: Sunday, 10 September, 18h-20h
different performative settings and healings of post-/colonial amnesia:
DJ Fred Hystère and Nina Bandi (molecular listening session),
Martina Buzzi (golden acupuncture/charming the ghost points) and
Gabriel Flückiger (meditation on pure gold)

Thursday, 14 September
Workshop trans-shine with Gabriel Flückiger: 18h-20h, registration required
Rohit Jain and knowbotiq in conversation about Swiss Psychotropic Gold and latent archives, 20h

Finissage: Sunday, 8 October, 16h-19h
performative settings and healings of post-/colonial amnesia:
Martina Buzzi (golden acupuncture/charming the ghost points) and
Gabriel Flückiger (meditation on pure gold)


Opening Hours
Thu – Sat 16:00h – 19:00h
or by appointment


Further information: corner-college.com and knowbotiq.net/psygold

For more than three hundred years, Swiss commodity trading has been part of a mesh of colonial, postcolonial and neoliberal entanglements. It enabled both early modern industrialization and the constitution of Switzerland as a financial center. It also brought about specific aesthetic, affective and moral economies. The Swiss myth of neutrality turns dirty materialities and trades in commodities into an opaque and discreet form of technocracy, security, philanthropy and white supremacy.

The Swiss Psychotropic Gold Refining fabulates on commodity trading and refining of gold. Narratives of violence, the access to black bodies, derivative enrichments, psychotropic energies and mutual indebtness molecularise on the high-gloss, tenderly protective metal. Calvinist gold is never shown. It goes through repeated cycles of purification/refinement, processing and remelting – making it suitable for any form of erasing traces and anonymising, as well as the healing of post-/colonial amnesia.

in collaboration with ifcar, Institute for Contemporary Art Research Zurich

In this workshop we try to connect to clarifying and healing qualities of gold. in a goldspray enhanced atmosphere, specific visualization and awareness exercises will be guided. golden shining energy may arise and nourish our energetic bodies. we allow us to dive into these golden psychoimaginations and enjoy them. But we also ask if this these are states beyond criticality where historical reflections on gold refinements and colonial settings are muted. bring your own little piece of gold to charge it anew!

date: thursday, 14th september, 6-8pm
place: corner college. 

free of cost but limited space of attendance, please register at cornercollege@gmail.com.

followed at 8pm by a discussion between Rohit Jain and knowbotiq on Swiss Psychotropic Gold and latent archives.

the workshop and discussion are part of knowbotiq's exhibition The Swiss Psychotropic Gold Refining. what is your mission? at Corner College.

Une prise de parole

13 - 29 October 2017

Opening Friday, 13 October 2017 at 19:00h
Performance I WANT TO SAY SOMETHING with Martina-Sofie Wildberger, Tobias Bienz and Denise Hasler.

Friday, 27 October 2017 at 13:30h
As part of the trans-local Sympodium What’s Wrong with Performance Art?, Martina-Sofie Wildberger's Artist Talk Performance as Book. Book as Performance in conversation with Georg Rutishauser.

Öffnungszeiten / Opening Hours
Do– Sa 16:00h – 19:00h / Thu-Sat 16:00h-19:00h
oder nach Vereinbarung / or by appointment






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The project is part of the Corner College platform Transferences: The Function of the Exhibition and Performative Processes in the Practices of Art – Questions of Participation, initiated by Dimitrina Sevova and Alan Roth.


This exhibition is supported by the Fonds cantonal d’art contemporain, DIP, Genève.

Guest event: Le Foyer Conversation XLXI

Appunti del passaggio and an Occasional Accent: Storia di storie

A (performative) evening with Maria Iorio, Raphaël Cuomo and Alessandra Eramo

Performance, screening (43’15 min, Italian, English subtitles) and discussion

Maria Iorio and Raphaël Cuomo’s film Appunti del passaggio (2014–16) reconstructs forgotten episodes related to migration from the South to the North of Europe in the 1960s. For tonight’s event the artists further developed a performance-based discussion in collaboration with the performer Alessandra Eramo, which will serve as an introduction to the screening. By investigating how the risk of contamination has been used as a strategy to control immigration and the legality of border crossing, the artists retrace the trajectories of some of those who made the passage, unfolding first-hand accounts that manifest a counter-memory of migration from southern Italy to Switzerland during the post-war ‘economic miracle’. Through a series of a series of transitions – from storytelling to listening, from one language to another – the artists raise questions in regards to the widespread perception of migrants as ‘abject’ bodies while concentrating on the biopolitical apparatuses that shape subjectivity and collective experience.

http://www.parallelhistories.org/
http://lefoyer-lefoyer.blogspot.ch/

On/Off Booth A13 | ABB Hall 550 | Ricarda-Huch-Strasse | 8050 Zürich-Oerlikon | http://www.onoff.today/

Corner College presents works by Donatella Bernardi

Thursday, 26.10.2017 - Sunday, 29.10.2017

Opening Hours
Thursday, 16:00h - 22:00h
Friday, 12:00h - 20:00h
Saturday | Sunday, 11:00h - 19:00h

Donatella Bernardi

Detailed program and additional materials


Friday, 27 October, 12:30h doors open, coffee / tea / buffet

13:00h Introduction by the curators

13:30h Artist Talk Performance as Book. Book as Performance by Martina-Sofie Wildberger in conversation with Georg Rutishauser in the context of her personal exhibition at Corner College and her collaborative book project with edition fink / Georg Rutishauser.

14:00h Session 1 Performing the Curatorial / Curating Performance with Chris Regn, Madeleine Amsler, Sibylle Omlin and Elise Lammer, moderated by Irene Müller
16:05h panel discussion

17:15h Performances by Heike Fiedler and Nathalie Rebholz

18:50h Keynote Inputs by Linda Cassens Stoian and Federica Martini

Saturday, 28 October, 10:30h doors open, coffee / tea / croissants
11:00h Session 2 Performative (Un)Learning – Performance as Teaching with Donatella Bernardi, San Keller, Kamen Stoyanov, Axelle Stiefel, moderated by Bernadett Settele
12:50h lunch break
13:35h panel discussion

14:45h Performances by Katharina Swoboda and Kamen Stoyanov

16:15h Session 3 What’s Wrong with Performance Art – Strategies in the Performative with Valerian Maly, Voin de Voin, Camille Aleña, Lou Masduraud and Guillaume Pilet, moderated by Dimitrina Sevova
18:35h panel discussion

19:45h Performances by Camille Aleña and Delphine Chapuis Schmitz


Sunday, 29 October, 10:30h doors open, coffee / tea / croissants

11:00h Session 4 Performance Szenen / Scenes – Tribal & Translocal Networking with Milenko Lazic, Pascal Schwaighofer, Muda Mathis and Gilles Furtwängler, moderated by Chris Regn
12:50h lunch break
13:50h panel discussion

15:00h Performances by Dorothea Schürch and Voin de Voin

16:30h Session 5 Performative Tactics, Activism & Performance Politics with Mo Diener, Lia García, Angela Marzullo, Nathalie Rebholz, moderated by Denis Pernet
18:30h panel discussion

19:30h Performances by Gilles Furtwängler and Axelle Stiefel

20:40h Final report by the observer throughout the Sympodium, Andrea Saemann

curated by Dorothea Rust and Dimitrina Sevova,
co-curated by Denis Pernet



[en]

The Sympodium sets up a two-and-a-half days live performative event that aims to provide a platform for presenting, discussing and performing Performance Art throughout a panel structure with an accent on moderated discussions and performances. The Sympodium strives to generate an energetic open space for aesthetic experience and exchange of knowledge between the current active practitioners in the field of Performance Art(s): artists, curators, performance study researchers, educators, and their publics. Those committed to Performance Art will share their practices, experience, reflections, thoughts, and research.

The Sympodium is a podium that encourages invited participants to give a very direct subjective response from the material objectives of the event itself. The Sympodium is quasi-academic and brings together practitioners inside and outside Academia to publicly present and discuss their practices and modes of articulation and action. The Sympodium operates within the local, interregional and international Performance Art scene. It strives for different perceptions and a new ontology of the relation between Performance and Art, and a pattern of branching that expands the field of live practices.

[de]

Das Sympodium stellt in einer zweieinhalbtägigen performativen Live-Veranstaltung eine Plattform zur Verfügung zum Präsentieren, Diskutieren und Performieren von Performance Art, in einer Podiumsstruktur mit Schwerpunkt auf moderierten Diskussionen und Performances. Das Sympodium strebt danach, einen energischen offenen Raum zu erzeugen für ästhetische Erfahrung und den Wissensaustausch zwischen den heute aktiven Praktiker_innen im Bereich der Performance Art(s): Künstler_innen, Kurator_innen, sowie Forscher_innen und Pädagog_innen zu Performance, und ihr Publikum. Jene, die der Performance Art verpflichtet sind, teilen ihre Praktiken, Erfahrungen, Überlegungen, Gedanken und Forschung.

Das Sympodium lädt als Podium die Teilnehmer_innen ein, aus den materiellen Zielen des Ereignisses selbst eine sehr direkte subjektive Antwort zu geben. Das Sympodium ist quasi-akademisch und bringt Praktiker_innen inner- und ausserhalb der akademischen Welt zusammen, um ihre Praktiken und ihre Artikulations- und Aktions-Modi öffentlich vorzustellen und zur Diskussion zu stellen. Das Sympodium operiert mit der lokalen, interregionalen und internationalen Performance Art-Szene. Es streicht unterschiedliche Wahrnehmungen heraus und erarbeitet eine neue Ontologie des Verhältnisses zwischen Performance und Kunst, in einem Verzweigungsmuster, welches das Feld der Live-Praktiken erweitert.



The Sympodium is supported by Kultur Stadt Zürich, Fachstelle Kultur Kanton Zürich, Pro Helvetia and Ernst und Olga Gubler-Hablützel Stiftung.

Opening 5 November 2017, 17:00h

Opening Hours
Thu/Fri/Sat 16h – 19h

Bachmann’s new video-audioinstallation examines the relationship between language, voice and power and the singular voice within the plural. The piece deals with negotiations of speech within a group and the exploration of the singular as well as the communal voice. The materiality of gestures and the spoken word become an embodied vocabulary through which the performers navigate the construct of language and affirmation of their own expression.




Exhibition supported by
Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia
Dr. Georg & Josi Guggenheim Stiftung
Erna und Curt Burgauer Stiftung
Ernst und Olga Gubler-Hablützel Stiftung

In relation to Nicole Bachmann’s new work I say, the artist together with Cathérine Hug and Dimitrina Sevova will discuss the wider implications of finding your voice and the political consequences this can have. But also think together and with the audience about artistic processes in this context, as well as reflect on the wider context of text-based, voice-based art works.

This event is part of Nicole Bachmann's personal exhibition at Corner College, I say.

I say explores the relation between the liveliness of the sound and the activity of listening by intensifying the microprocess of forming words so as to enunciate them. It unfolds the micropolitics of language structures in close relation to body movements in the plural and singular, to ask how the speech affects the body, instituting corporeal vulnerability and body resistance. The artist employs warm-up techniques of voice practices in actors’ routines, when they rehearse and test speech sounds in order to speak clearly during the performance. In Bachmann’s approach, the rehearsal is a performative situation evolving new emotions and affects in ever changing environments to mobilize the power of the voice with the materiality of the abstracting machine in the body in the variations between the combination of selected and collected words. In Samuel Beckett’s assertion, “make the limits of our language tremble,” one can grasp how I say produces a breathing space at the limit when the forms appear – a space of knowledge.
(Excerpt from the text on Nicole Bachmann's I say by Dimitrina Sevova; find the full text here)

Interview with Nicole Bachmann by Dimitrina Sevova

An exhibition of the Art Work(ers) research project by ECAV / Ecole Cantonale d’Art du Valais.
Curated by Robert Ireland, Petra Köhle and Federica Martini.

With contributions by Donatella Bernardi, Christopher Füllemann, Patricio Gil Flood, Robert Ireland, Petra Köhle, Federica Martini, Christof Nüssli, Aurélie Strumans, Nicolas Vermot-Petit-Outhenin.

Texts by Leah Anderson, Andrea Bellini, Donatella Bernardi, Mabe Bethonico, Chrisantha Chetty, Robert Ireland, Alexandros Kyriakatos, Federica Martini, Guillaume Pilet, David Romero, Marcella Turchetti, W.A.G.E.

Thursday, 07 December 2017  –  Sunday, 28 January 2018

Opening: Thursday, 07 December 2017, 18:00 h – 21:00 h
Discussion: Friday, 08 December 2017, 11:00 h – 13:00 h

Opening hours:
Thu-Sat 16:00h - 19:00h
or by appointment
Closed from 25 to 31 December 2017.
Do-Sa 16:00h - 19:00h
oder nach Vereinbarung
Vom 25. zum 31. Dezember 2017 geschlossen.

The research project Art Work(ers) began from a set of historical facts and some intuitions: the concurrent deskilling of art and industrial labour; the parallel emergence of applied research in the arts and in utopian industrial plans; the observation that art did not enter the factory only once production was over, as an alternative or a gentrification agent. Rather, artistic production had often overlapped, both aesthetically and politically, with industrial labour and materials.

Working in between the past and present of two factories (Alusuisse, Chippis and Olivetti, Ivrea), the exhibition Blackout shares performances, discussions and printed matters from the archive of the Art Work(ers) research project.

The exhibition Blackout is a collateral event of the SARN Symposium “Art Research Work,” ZHdK, Zurich, 8 – 9 December 2017.

The Art Work(ers) research project is supported by the Hes • so research fund and the Canton du Valais.

Opening: Samstag, 9. Dezember 2017, 17-22.30 Uhr

UNTERTAGE
im Waldhuus
best of visarte zürich & guests

Guests: Corner College, Die Diele, Kunsthaus Aussersihl, The Museum of the Unwanted
Konzept/Kuration: Daniela Minneboo & Sandra Oehy
Bar: Sandi Paucic + Team
DJ: Monica Germann

Unter Tage im Waldhuus präsentiert visarte zürich zum Jahresende einen grossen Überblick über das vielfältigen Zürcher Kunstschaffen.

Dieses Jahr wird unsere Ausstellung an einem sehr besonderen Ort stattfinden: In den leerstehenden unterirdischen Diensträumen des früheren Hotel Dolder Waldhaus in Zürich. Das Gebäude wird bis zu seinem geplanten Abbruch von Projekt Interim als "Waldhuus" zwischengenutzt.

Neben den Mitgliedern des Berufsverbands für Visuelle Kunst visarte zürich werden erstmals auch ausgewählte Zürcher Kunsträume und Ausstellungsformate als Gäste an der Ausstellung teilnehmen. Mit dabei sind das Corner College, Die Diele, das Kunsthaus Aussersihl und The Museum of the Unwanted.

Corner College präsentiert Arbeiten von Johanna Bruckner, Anne-Laure Franchette, Milva Stutz und Katharina Swoboda.

Weitere Informationen finden sich auf der Materialien-Seite des Corner College.









Corner College legt sein Augenmerk auf vier künstlerische Positionen und deren für die Ausstellung ausgewählten Arbeiten. Diese Auswahl sehen wir als Zusammenspiel singulärer Positionen sowie als kollektive Arbeit, die ORLANs Körper bildet und ein transhumanistisches Engagement für kritische Ökologien zum Ausdruck bringt, als Praxis der posthumanistischen feministischen Wende, eine “materialistische, sekuläre, geerdete und unsentimentale Antwort auf die opportunistische transspeziesistische Kommodifizierung des Lebens, welche die Logik des fortgeschrittenen Kapitalismus ist.” Wir sehen diese Sammlung künstlerischer Arbeiten in den sozio-politischen und ästhetischen Verlangen des Feminismus der vierten Welle.
Kuratiert von Dimitrina Sevova & Alan Roth

Corner College’s focal point is on four artist positions and their works selected for the exhibition. We see the selection as a collaboration of singular positions and as a collective work that forms ORLAN’s body and expresses a transhumanist engagement in critical ecologies as a practice of the postanthropocentric feminist turn, which is a “materialist, secular, grounded and unsentimental response to the opportunistic transspecies commodification of Life that is the logic of advanced capitalism.” We see the collection of art works in the socio-political and aesthetic desires of fourth-wave feminism.
Curated by Dimitrina Sevova & Alan Roth


VERANSTALTUNGEN

Sa, 9.12.17, 17 Uhr Kabuki-Aufführung mit Porte Rouge
Sa, 16.12.17, 15 Uhr Performances von Svetlana Hansemann und von Olivia Wiederkehr
Do, 28.12.17, ab 16.30 Uhr Kaffee, Kunst und Konversation mit Artist/Curator Clare Goodwin und special guests – The Museum of the Unwanted (no3)
Sa, 6.1.18, 13 Uhr Die Diele zeigt Shortcuts von Nino Baumgartner (Gutes Schuhwerk, Platzzahl beschränkt, Anmeldung unter info@diediele.ch)
So, 7.1.18, 14 Uhr Corner College (Dimitrina Sevova & Alan Roth) lädt zu Künstlergespräch und Diskussion mit Johanna Bruckner, Anne-Laure Franchette, Michael Günzburger und Milva Stutz

Bitte warm anziehen, die Räume sind nicht geheizt!


AUSSTELLUNG

Ausstellung: 10. Dezember 2017 – 7. Januar 2018
Öffnungszeiten: Do + Fr 16-19 Uhr / Sa 14-17 Uhr
Vernissage: Samstag, 9. Dezember 2017, 17-22.30 Uhr
Finissage: Sonntag, 7. Januar 2018, 14-17 Uhr

Anreise: Tram 3/8/15 bis Römerhof, dann mit der Dolderbahn bis Dolder Waldhaus, links runter zum Eingang "Anlieferung" (Zugang über Dolderstrasse)
Adresse: Waldhuus, Kurhausstrasse 18, 8032 Zürich

With Mirjana Power, Nadja Baldini, Jeltje Gordon-Lennox, Dimitrina Sevova and Julius John Alam.

I am a Lahore based artist. I received a Bachelors of Fine Art degree from the National College of Arts, Lahore in 2013 and a Masters of Fine Art degree from Parsons the New School for Design in 2016, where I studied on a Fulbright Scholarship. I have exhibited at Participant Inc, New York, 1×1 Gallery, Dubai, 12 Gates, Philadelphia, Gallery of Light, DUCTAC, Dubai, Canvas Gallery, Karachi, Koel Gallery, Karachi, Sanat Initiative, Karachi, Taseer Art Gallery, Lahore, and Rohtas II, Lahore. I currently teach at the National College of Arts, Lahore and also contribute to various art publications.

In 2016, I engaged some young people to help me make work for a new exhibition. I felt that the safe social space that formed during that time was transformative and healing for everyone. This experience shifted my work from an object based practice to a participatory approach. So, in my next art project I tried to recreate that safe social space. But I found galleries to be stressful spaces that put pressure on people to behave in a certain way. So I grew dissatisfied with the gallery system.

When I arrived in Zurich in 2017 for a residency, I thought it would be better that, instead of working from this problematic position, I use the opportunity to find a solution. I conceived Zurich Konversationen as a collection of conversations with people who employ the arts as a tool in their own practices in an attempt to make the world a better place. Through these conversations I am trying to better understand the role of art and artists in life and how the approaches discussed in the conversations can help me in my own practice.

As I am nearing the end of the project it is becoming clear to me that I cannot call myself an artist anymore, nor can I make and exhibit art in galleries. So I have decided to call myself a facilitator and to independently hold one-on-one and group sessions to facilitate self-healing through the arts. Having been through my own self-healing process and continuously working on my own awareness I understand the challenges that arise through such a process. As a facilitator I have two main roles: to ensure that a safe social space is created for the participant(s); and, to hold the psychological space for inner healing to take place.

The series of conversations I had with people concerning the same are archived as audio recordings. These can be accessed online at the website (www.zurichkonversationen.com) that I made exclusively for the project. Dimitrina Sevova has kindly invited me use Corner College's space to present my final project. It will be structured like a panel discussion. She will mediate and there will be 2 or 3 other people on the panel. It will be a group discussion about the same questions that I have posed during the project and also a reflection on the project itself. It will be held on 16 December at 4:30PM.


Julius John Alam's residency and Zurich Konversationen are kindly supported by IG Rote Fabrik and Pro Helvetia - Swiss Arts Council.