The Institute for Scene Experiments is a fictional institution devoted to the investigation, production and dissemination of scenes. ISE assembles groups of performers and technicians to analyse, deconstruct and reconstitute elements of cinematic scenes for camera, exploring alternative modes of staging narratives, framing, sound, and light. ISE aims to reflect on the film crew as a social form, engaging in the generativity and potentialities of scenes independent of plot, development and conclusivity, through formal techniques as well as collective authorship, ‘open rehearsal’ and collective editing.

Hallucinogenesis is a made-up composite, referring to a creative process originating in the perception of things that are (seemingly) not present. This creative process is continuous and generative. It involves the emergence of substantial artistic creations from subtle, intangible realms. These creations, in turn, evoke subtle sensations in those who perceive them.

In ProtoZone16, the invited artists evoke the process of Hallucinogenesis, allowing to emerge what lies hidden beneath the surface. Their approaches span a wide spectrum: from acts of remembering, researching, and summoning to moments of pause and deep listening; from weaving and experimental writing to the exploration of psychoactive substances; from tracing and renewing ancestral knowledge, myths, rituals and historical narratives to simultaneously engaging with techno music, contemporary technological culture and gender politics.

The creative processes in ProtoZone16: Hallucinogenesis take various forms—video installations and sonic rituals, paintings, prints and sculptures, archives, real game play, exchanges and workshops—all unfolding across the ProtoZone’s phases of high and low intensity.

When you are ready, take a deep breath and dive into this ProtoZone—trusting that whatever is meant to emerge will do so alongside you.

Supported by Stadt Zürich Kultur, Ministry of Culture Taiwan (Dondon Hounwn & Temu Basaw), Office for Contemporary Art Norway (Nikhil Vettukatil), Berliner Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhalt (LABOUR, Omsk Social Club, Simon(e) Jaikiriuma Paetau), SüdKulturFonds (Elizabeth Pirela Gonzalez), Gathering London (Tai Shani), Albert Huber-Stiftung.

HI-INTENSITY-PROGRAM 13.09.-15.09.

Friday, 13.09.

open 17-22h (exhibition muted 19-21h)

19:00 “círculo de palabras” with Elizabeth Pirela Gonzalez & Simon(e) Jaikiriuma Paetau

20:30 LABOUR presents “death levels us all”

Saturday, 14.09.

open 10:30-22h (exhibition muted 10:30-16:30 & 18:30-20:00)

10:30-12:30 “Utopiates: The Lucid Fleshware Journey” with Omsk Social Club

12:30-14:30 “A Tofutopian Ritual” with He Shen

14:30-16:30 lila. Queer Festival Silent Reading Rave

17:00 Intro to ProtoZone16 with the curatorial team

18:30-20:00 Roundtable „Archiving Queer & Disabled Practices“ initiated by X COLLECTIVE X with Clotilde de Rocco, Sahara Azzeg, Kami Mathiasin, Meloe Gennai

Sunday, 15.09.

open 14-18h

LO-INTENSITY 16.09.-03.11.
open every Saturday 14-20h & Sunday 14-18h

live program tbc

Protozone15: Time is Pressure, brings together six existing projects by five international artists, with all but one produced after 2020. Their presentation is organized dramaturgically, both spatially and in relation to time.

In so doing we are committed to further extending our research into understanding artistic processes, this time by focusing on processes of display and the lifespan of a work as well as in the ongoing processes of our long term collaborations with the invited artists.

the body

The performing body is overworked, isolated, anxious, and continues to be asked to adapt and be resilient. Both present, but mostly absent from the exhibition space, the body is of central focus. The works exhibited present the body as human, avatar and representational, under the pressure of time, both responding as well as rejecting it.

the archive

The archive is a production of the self, one that is always recording and monitoring, while the same is being done to it in return, with and without our consent. The artists present take this into consideration, merging their cultural, social, and personal archives into the present tense. They find agency in the archive, presenting time as nonlinear and with it their body and identity as unfixed and multiplicitous.

the score

The exhibition as a dramaturgical device, presenting its opening hours as a score to both highlight and disrupt these real institutional limitations. Treating the works as performances of their own opens up the possibility of constant performance time, with or without a live performer present. Instead focus is placed upon the visitor, allowing time to act as a guide through the works’ rotation regardless of when one enters the exhibition.

* The title “Time is Pressure” is borrowed from Cally Spooner’s words around DEAD TIME (Maggie’s Solo) 2021, which was presented in our previous Protozone14: Staying Close as a prologue to the current one.

ZURICH ART WEEKEND

Friday, 07. 06. open 17-21h

17:30-17:50 PERFORMANCE ‘THE BUG (THE FUTURE IS BEHIND US)’ BY DORA GARCÍA

Saturday, 08.06. open 14-20h

17-18h Lecture performance by Daniel Felstead

curator Michelangelo Miccolis in conversation with Daniel Felstead

Sunday, 23.06.
17-18h Performance I I I (something flat, something cosmic, something endless) by SERAFINE1369 at Shedhalle in collaboration with Gessnerallee

In the hall, ProtoZone14 hosts the site-specific installation DEAD TIME (Maggie’s Solo) by Cally Spooner. A choreography for a dancer and a cinematographer shot in one single take.

A main focus of Spooner’s project is asking how “performance”—the 24/7 demand to competitively “perform” (well) at all times, whether on social media, at work, or through efficient sleep—has come to govern our social bonds. And, not least, asking how such metric governance might be resisted by adopting other models of time.

In the screening room, Tai Shani’s new film, My Bodily Remains, Your Bodily Remains, And All The Bodily Remains That Ever Were, And Ever Will Be is shown.

The film is a poetic meditation on various historical resistance movements and groups, the spiritual dimensions of anti-supremacism, intersectional queer feminism, communism and revolutionary thinking. It recognises the emancipatory power of love and pleasure as a catalyst for radical change.

The works by Cally Spooner and Tai Shani can be visited for the entire duration of the ProtoZone from 6th of April. The rest of the space and time is dedicated to what we feel is now most urgent: live gathering. We invite you to gather around dance, around poetry, music, excursions, workshops and meals.

This live program starts on the first day of the ProtoZone with Politics of doughs, an itinerant recipe library and a participative meal gathering initiated by Larissa Tiki Mbassi. The process of dough making is the center of each encounter. For the gathering at Shedhalle, Cynthia Mai Ammann and Zoé Nguyen present their visual and sensory approach to « bánh baos » on the 6th of April 13-16h (register here, waiting list).

In the afternoon of the 6th, Alex Baczyński-Jenkins’ performance Federico will be shown for one day only . This is a choreography of desire in the smallest scale, that mobiles affect and sensuality, as a means for a queer archive of touch. It will be repeated three times over the course of the evening.

In May we continue the live-program.

On the 4th of May, Ivo Dimchevs’ METCH invites to different modes of gathering around an artwork and builds gentle forms of trust by generating an intimate community with the audience.

“METCH is a concert exhibition, an auction, an exercise, an excessive production of paintings, an obsessive dialog with the audience and of course the songs… I know many people come to my shows because they like my songs. For good or for bad those people will need to experience or crash with my very complex and unpredictable relationship to theatre, dance, politics, and contemporary art. “ Ivo Dimchev

On the 11th of May, we will re-visit the dialogic formats we developed in January at Shedhalle. This day invites the visitors to speak and listen to each other from their perspective and with their hearts. We will be supported by artist-in-residence Naghmeh Manavi and her writings. Her current works study neuroscience, power structures and political matters at the level of personal daily life. Social and collective acts are considered a performance practice with the collective narrative as the score.

On May 18th, we continue with aLifveforms (fed and card for by JP Raether). JP Raether’s transdisciplinary performative work attends to a group of constructed and constantly evolving identities. These aLifveforms are composed of language, technological skins, digital devices, and Raether’s fleshly body, which they embrace and from whose identity they simultaneously continue to detach themselves more and more. The SelfSisters, or AlterIdentities, are site-specific, colorful beings interwoven with everyday objects, whose works address the constitution of reality through language.

Currently, three active lines are “alive”, dedicated to topics such as reproductive and biotechnologies (Transformella), globalized tourism (Schwarmwesen) or occult substances of contemporary technology (Protektorama). The reproductive lifeline Transformella malor visits each of the 468 “Ikealities” around the world – the local store of the global furniture chain. In the course of her algorhythmic ritual, which is set to last for decades, she has already appeared in Berlin, Bergen, Warsaw, Hamburg and Düsseldorf, among other places. At Shedhalle in May 2024, she will take visitors on a journey to Ikeality in Dietlikon.

In the course of the last weekend of ProtoZone14, Shedhalle hosts an iteration of The Institute for Embodied Creative Practices for the second time. Isabel Lewis has been modelling “The Institute” since 2016 under various names and different formats. The experimental Institute and research center reimagines the format of “institution” and speculates what a cultural/educational institution of the future can and could be. It works toward innovation on the structural, organizational and sensory levels in order to make fertile ground for the emergence of new forms of cultural production, reflection, and critique.

The Institute for Embodied Creative Practices at Shedhalle is co-hosted by Isabel Lewis together with artists and scientists from Zurich as well as international academies. (more info on program and participation coming soon)

Shedhalle x STUDIO Magazine invites you to get together to pour out and shake out whatever charges your nervous system at the moment. Forget your phone, instead bring sunglasses. Let the sound take over your body.

To pay homage to the dusk of spring equinox week and other events in town later on, we start early. Come for a shared dinner to enter the dance slowly with nightfall.

Notes: Bring Sunglasses. There is a no-photo/video policy. STUDIO Magazine will document the first set.

With the invaluable support of Clubbüro Rote Fabrik & Rhizom Sound System <3

18 – 20h Communal cooking & eating, open decks hosted by Channel6 & Chaos Angel

20 – 22h PHUM

22 – 0h soungou