Shedhalle – ProtoZone19: Ruptures \ Reliances

2025-05-23

Proto
Zone19:
Ruptures
Reliances

In short

with Bronwyn Katz, Vika Kirchenbauer, Göksu Kunak, Layton Lachman, Omsk Social Club, Su Yu Hsin, Activist Choreographies of Care (Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi and Sunny Pfalzer)

Once part of Lake Zurich, the site of Shedhalle was transformed into seemingly solid ground by artificial embankments. ProtoZone19 takes this human-made change as a starting point to question the mutability of material and social foundations – and thus also the systems on which ideas of stability, power and community are based.

Lake water returns to Shedhalle, where the participating artists delve into how material and immaterial conditions are controlled and interconnected, how fundamental systems collapse, and how collective needs can be maintained in times of climate crisis and authoritarian politics.

ProtoZone19 moves on unstable ground as a starting point for changing ways of dealing with what surrounds us.

curated by Phila Bergmann & Thea Reifler

assistant curator Vanessa Bosch

Supported by Stadt Zürich Kultur, ifa – Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen, Department of Cultural Affairs Taipei City Government

What material and social foundations do you rely on?
How do you relate to them?

Until the end of the 19th century, the location of Shedhalle was part of Lake Zurich. Shells, stones, algae, microorganisms and small fish used to populate this place. In the course of industrialization, the lakeshore here was expanded by artificial filling for the construction of this former silk weaving mill. Now you stand here, in a contemporary art space, on seemingly solid ground, and ProtoZone19: Ruptures \ Reliances symbolically lets the lake water flow back into the hall.

This ProtoZone is dedicated to instability and ruptures — as forms of historical continuity and crises in climate and politics. It invites visitors to delve into mutual reliances—both material and social—and to pursue solidarity-based ways of interacting. How can we understand instability as a starting point for changing relationships with our surroundings?

Involved with these notions, the practices of the invited artists find various approaches: Su Yu Hsin expands her research on water and its connection to ecology, industry, and technology to include the history of Shedhalle’s location.

Vika Kirchenbauer examines the emergence of modern art spaces between welfare and power politics in an essay performance video. Activist Choreographies of Care (Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi and Sunny Pfalzer) bring the resistant and collective spirit of the perfocraZe International Artist Residency in Kumasi to Zurich for a day.

Göksu Kunak’s performative installation deals with a car accident that had a lasting impact on society and politics in Turkey. Layton Lachman’s performative practice invokes the ability to shift identities.

Omsk Social Club asks through Real Game Play what AI would be like if it were trained with radical care. And Bronwyn Katz’ sculptural and installative practice offers an alternative mode of preserving, reading and understanding ritual, language and the earth.

We invite you to become part of ProtoZone19 and move with us on unstable grounds.