Coming soon!

Book your artist! is an online platform initiated by Shedhalle Zürich, L’Abri Genève and la rada – spazio per l’arte contemporanea Locarno, connecting young artists with local audiences in the three main language regions of Switzerland. Book your artist! is an invitation to intimate live encounters with emergent visual or multidisciplinary artists active in Switzerland, in times of covid-19 and beyond.

A live encounter typically takes the form of a 1-2 hours intervention for a small audience of 1 to 5 people or more depending on artistic intentions and the covid-19 situation. These interventions cover an aspect of the artist’s work which acquires specific relevancy in relation to the covid-19 situation. To which extent does the pandemic shed new light on works already produced? What are ways of coping with the uncertainty inherent to an artistic activity which might also be of relevancy for audiences in times of coronavirus-related uncertainty?

The audience is invited to book directly on the platform with a personal message to the artist including a short description of who they are. Audiences without internet access can book per telephone. The audience gets to decide where the encounter should take place among different indoor and outdoor options such as the audience’s homes, an outdoor location, the art spaces or the artists’ studios.

With the support of Pro Helvetia.

Conceived by Isabelle Vuong for Shedhalle.

You are a young visual or performance artist – or an art or performance venue – based in Switzerland, and you have interest in the project, please get in contact with us to know more about the plan of realization and possibilities of collaboration.

Remain Calm

(Reduced +)

A friend of mine once told me that there is no greater fortune than being in an institution like this one when the storm comes. Togetherness that weaves itself so tightly that you will never see yourself as a single unit again. – Miriam Stoney

“Remain Calm” by artist Nile Koetting invites audiences into an ever-evolving space of installation, performance, sound, light, scents, as well as texts written by author and researcher Miriam Stoney.

Inspired by the experience of evacuation drills for the occurrence of disasters in Japan, where Koetting was born and raised, “Remain Calm” muses on the conditions of “safe” zones in-between high-security technologies, risk-hedging measures, digitized care and shared spaces.

How do we exist and connect in a world where the prevention of disaster and risk are prevalent? “Remain Calm” provides a space for rituals and reflections, to explore singularity and communality in hyper-secured and unsecured time and space.

“Remain Calm” first breached at Kunstverein in Göttingen in March 2019 and then re-appeared in different forms at Palais de Tokyo, Klosterruine Berlin and Centre Pompidou x West Bund Museum Shanghai.

With: Nile Koetting (Concept, Artwork), Miriam Stoney (Script, Text), Juan Felipe Amaya Gonzalez (Choreographic development), Lara Dâmaso (Performance), David Suivez (Performance), Nozomu Matsumoto (Sound), Yoshihiro Inada (Video), Belle Santos (Costume), Benjamin Maus (Technical development)

Projector Robot sponsored by Cerevo, Animation background by AA-VFX

Unterstützt durch Stadt Zürich Kultur, ZHdK und Elisabeth Weber Stiftung

Programmed by Philipp Bergmann & Thea Reifler for Shedhalle

11.09.2020

16-22h no reservation needed

12.09.2020

10-18h no reservation needed

13.09.2020

10-17hno reservation neededfollowed by a Talk with Nile Koetting, Miriam Stoney, Marcella Lista (Head Curator, Video & New Media Collection, Musée national d’art moderne – centre Pompidou, Paris (online)), Lhaga Koondhor (cultural curator), Philipp Bergmann & Thea Reifler (members curatorial team Shedhalle), about the process of ‚Remain Calm‘ RSVP

With this presentation, Shedhalle takes part in Zurich Art Weekend. Check the full program here

Erotic Sociability

In this workshop Isabel Lewis shares ideas around sociality and embodiment. No formal training of any kind is required to participate and all adults with a curiosity about dance and other embodied practices are encouraged to attend.

Lewis will introduce feminist sociologist Roslyn Bologh’s notion of “erotic sociability” as a form of interhuman sociality and guide a conversation about this as an alternative to the dominant 20th century relational modes of competition, conflict, and coercion. This workshop will then focus on the tuning and heightening of the senses in order to facilitate a state of hyper-presence that will be the aid towards generative and affective forms of being and dancing together.

The figure of the unambitious stripper serves as a metaphor guiding us to connect with our inner worlds in order to become more radically receptive to our outer worlds. For Lewis “unambitiousness” is key to the notion of the unambitious stripper. The outward-oriented gaze of the stripper that usually reaches out to address and arrest the client with the ambition of monetary gain is turned in on itself in this scenario. In this movement workshop instead of stripping off our clothes, we will use our imaginations to turns our attention inward, toward the surface of our own skin and imagine peeling away layers of social constructs and identity to access a personal inner space.

The unambitious stripper dances first for themselves and then for others ultimately reconnecting with the human and nonhuman presences they share space with. The dance that emerges is processual, a double motion of inner and outer, a becoming and an undoing, a movement on a continuum of becoming an object of interest and desire and being drawn out as an interested and desiring subject.

Please register for

the workshop here!

With: Isabel Lewis
Programmed by Philipp Bergmann & Thea Reifler for Shedhalle

With this workshop, Shedhalle takes part in the Fleshy Interface Festival, initiated by Theater Neumarkt. Check the full program here

Kunstarbeiter*innen Solidaritätsverein invites you to the inaugural Civic Forum for Art Workers. The Forum brings together artists to help build and occupy a liminal social space where we will embody new perspectives for renegotiating our interactions as art workers.

Over two afternoon assemblies, split between Longtang and Shedhalle in Zurich, we will facilitate a space for civic introspection; a collective inquiry into how we build social contracts with autonomy and social equity as a cornerstone. This first iteration of the Forum will employ experiments in social dramaturgy to initiate discourse and motivate collective potential.

Join us:

Saturday, 3 Oktober 14:00 – 18:00 Longtang

Sunday, 4 October 14:00 – 18:00 Shedhalle

Kunstarbeiter*innen Solidaritätsverein was founded in response to the overwhelming call for new interactions around the systems that make up Contemporary Art production. Our aim is to work laterally to maintain greater autonomy for arts communities and aid in the elimination of systemic exploitation of creative labor.

Please bring a mask. Space is limited. Please register to reserve your spot:

register@civicforumforartworkers.live

With PROTOZONES 2020-2025, everything at Shedhalle will revolve around process-based art in the coming years. What this means in detail and which formats will be created is to be discovered over the next five years. We cordially invite you to be part of this process and look forward to meeting you at the media conference on 19 October 2020 at 5 pm.

Process-based art is based on the principle that it creates concrete communities and unknown spaces for action and thought – something Shedhalle has always been known for. This requires one thing above all: presence. To get involved. Sharing and exchange. For this reason, we are not planning to open our first Protozone with a media orientation in the classical sense, but rather to use our interface character in the Zurich cultural landscape. We are interested in bringing together those people who we believe belong together; media with artists with institutions with interested audiences.

Media conference, 19 October 2020, 5 pm at Shedhalle Zurich

PROTOZONES 2020-2025 the team presents the protozones
SHARING SHEDHALLE walking through the space together, Q&A in small groups and a pre-peek at the first protozone, which will open on 23 October.

We would be pleased to welcome you soon on site at Shedhalle. Please register by 16 October 2020 with your name and contact details via this e-mail address and bring a mask with you – this will help us to implement the protection concept. It is very important to us that everyone feels safe and comfortable in the room.

Until then, take good care of yourself.

Miriam Haltiner – management,
Thea Reifler and Philipp Bergmann – artistic direction,
Michelangelo Miccolis, Lucie Tuma, Isabelle Vuong – curatorial board

Contamination/Resilience

Hi-Intensity

The Impossibility of Living Without Each Other / How would the world look if we acted in a radically different way?

The current crisis reveals tendencies in society that have been present long before the pandemic: the growing disparity between rich and poor, the weakening of social and health services, increasing dependence on the international circulation of commodities, aggressive nationalism, and the marginalisation of certain groups of people. The crisis has turned fear into a viable incentive for action. An apocalyptic end seems more easily imaginable than a world of mutual support.

At the same time, the current situation shows how much people are interconnected, and it exposes our reliance on other species. In this moment, the protozone CONTAMINATION/RESILIENCE envisions new and hopeful visions for the future.

Contamination means danger—and change: which systems and structures are currently in the process of dissolution? How do they change, and under which circumstances do they reappear in the current crisis? We bring in resilience as counter-image and counter-strategy. The pressing question of our time is: what makes communities and ecosystems resilient?

The protozone CONTAMINATION/RESILIENCE looks for concepts in which science, technology, and the arts can coexist. It investigates forms that facilitate the cohabitation of diverse beings, cultures, and genders. At the same time, this exhibition format, the protozone, is an experimental system that itself is subject to processes and changes. To approach the term resilience, CONTAMINATION/RESILIENCE is building on feminist ideas by science fiction writers like Octavia Butler and Marge Piercy, and on the work of theoreticians such as Vandana Shiva, Donna Haraway, and Silvia Federici. Connection, relation, and networks are at stake. These authors envision a world in which the diversity of life is valued and protected, because it is evident how intertwined with and reliant on families, communities, and eco-systems existence is. We ask a leading question:

how could a world look if we decided to do things in a radically different way?

CONTAMINATION/RESILIENCE takes the idea of utopia as a point of departure to describe an ongoing process of acting and (re-)negotiating. It is about sickness and care, as well as mutual support, and about reciprocal change. Thus, it also opens a space to rethink own attitudes and learned mechanisms of handling crises.

In front of this background, the protozone gathers practices, theories, sci-fi-novels and artworks that pursue queer and eco-feminist ideas and stimulate a new way of thinking about the future.

The high intensity phase, which opens CONTAMINATION/RESILIENCE, invites 12 artists and collaborators to show existing works and the processes linked to them. The Shedhalle is open for two days and two nights starting on October 23. The audience is invited to fully experience the first protozone and actively participate in it. After that, during the low intensity phase, the works can be seen on the weekends through December 6.

Participating Artists: Lou Drago, Anna Ehrenstein + House of Tupamaras, Nina Emge, Nicholas Grafia + Mikołaj Sobczak, Dominique Koch, Shaun Motsi, Omsk Social Club, Stéph + Tina Yemi Reden, Sabrina Röthlisberger, Lauryn Youden.

In the gallery space, the works evoke different states of consciousness. They propose speculation on playful platforms, and they encourage the application and exchange of knowledge. The pieces invite visitors to work together, to trace connections and interplays, and they promote experiencing and feeling connections from different perspectives.

A detailed program is to be found in the agenda.

Programmed by Philipp Bergmann and

Thea Reifler for Shedhalle

Supported by Stadt Zürich Kultur, Pro Helvetia – Schweizer Kulturstiftung, Abteilung Kultur Basel-Stadt, Saly Frommer Stiftung, Badertscher AG

Suspending Time: Meditations for accessing alternate space/time in music

Music makes time audible – Susanne Langer

“Time exists for us because we experience tensions and their resolutions.” Philosopher Susanne Langer, claims that the particular building-up of tensions, and “their ways of breaking or diminishing or merging into longer and greater tensions, make for a vast variety of temporal forms.” In most Western music, we generally listen within a linear framework, recalling what has already been heard and anticipating what will come next. Often without ever having heard a piece of music before it is possible to anticipate the next phrase because of how it was suggested earlier in the piece.

Johnathan Kramer introduced the concept of vertical time in music after experiencing a performance of Erik Satie’s Vexations. Kramer encountered a feeling of having exhausted the information content of the work and experienced “getting bored, becoming imprisoned by a hopelessly repetitious piece.” The experience of time became slower and slower, threatening to stop. But through this boredom, Kramer discovered a different mode of listening. By being liberated from considering the music’s past and future, the present expanded; suddenly it was possible to enter the “vertical time of the piece.”

A vector can be drawn between this alternate mode of listening to music and numerous meditation and mindfulness practices that similarly emphasise the importance of focusing on the present. As Transience host Lou Drago sees it, meditation can be used to obviate thought in order to alleviate oneself temporarily from the weight of self-consciousness and other anxieties.

For the work Suspending Time: Meditations for accessing alternate space/time in music, Lou Drago speculates on various types of music which potentiate the experiencing of non-linear time.

The audience is invited to interact with the music with the objective of attempting to experience a suspension of time. This work hypothesises that these two factors, meditation and non-linear listening, are interdependent. The experience of vertical time can have a meditative effect, yet effectively one must be meditating – be alleviated from conscious thought – to be able to experience time vertically.

Lucid Hardware – The Sleep Temple

This hybrid Sleepover Asclepeions Temple uses both the methodology of the ancient greek healing night temples and the peer comfort of a teen sleepover. Exploring methodology that has been key to Omsk Social Clubs practice since 2016 the participant will go through a series of unconscious expanding exercises which envelop the ideas of Transpersonative Living: related to the enhanced interpersonal sensitivity, insight and perception of an individual that can feed into a group dynamic when controlled with care.

This unique work will require you to sign up as a group, you can sign up as 2 or 4 people.

The piece does require you to have some physical contact with your group members (only) so if touch triggers you this may not be the piece for you. We will operate a safe space policy throughout the piece. It will also, of course, require you to spend the night in the work so please bring suitable clothing and blankets, sleeping bags etc. on signing up you will be given more details on what you need for the work.

Timetable
23:00 Start
06:59 Breakfast (sunrise – daylight saving time ends)
07:59 Yoga

To join please email us stating the names and email addresses of your group.

With this workshop, Shedhalle takes part in the program Ü40 – Rote Fabrik, *24.10.1980

The Impossibility of Living Without Each Other / How would the world look if we acted in a radically different way?

The current crisis reveals tendencies in society that have been present long before the pandemic: the growing disparity between rich and poor, the weakening of social and health services, increasing dependence on the international circulation of commodities, aggressive nationalism, and the marginalisation of certain groups of people. The crisis has turned fear into a viable incentive for action. An apocalyptic end seems more easily imaginable than a world of mutual support.

At the same time, the current situation shows how much people are interconnected, and it exposes our reliance on other species. In this moment, the protozone CONTAMINATION/RESILIENCE envisions new and hopeful visions for the future.

Contamination means danger—and change: which systems and structures are currently in the process of dissolution? How do they change, and under which circumstances do they reappear in the current crisis? We bring in resilience as counter-image and counter-strategy. The pressing question of our time is: what makes communities and ecosystems resilient?

The protozone CONTAMINATION/RESILIENCE looks for concepts in which science, technology, and the arts can coexist. It investigates forms that facilitate the cohabitation of diverse beings, cultures, and genders. At the same time, this exhibition format, the protozone, is an experimental system that itself is subject to processes and changes. To approach the term resilience, CONTAMINATION/RESILIENCE is building on feminist ideas by science fiction writers like Octavia Butler and Marge Piercy, and on the work of theoreticians such as Vandana Shiva, Donna Haraway, and Silvia Federici. Connection, relation, and networks are at stake. These authors envision a world in which the diversity of life is valued and protected, because it is evident how intertwined with and reliant on families, communities, and eco-systems existence is. We ask a leading question:

how could a world look if we decided to do things in a radically different way?

CONTAMINATION/RESILIENCE takes the idea of utopia as a point of departure to describe an ongoing process of acting and (re-)negotiating. It is about sickness and care, as well as mutual support, and about reciprocal change. Thus, it also opens a space to rethink own attitudes and learned mechanisms of handling crises.

In front of this background, the protozone gathers practices, theories, sci-fi-novels and artworks that pursue queer and eco-feminist ideas and stimulate a new way of thinking about the future.

The high intensity phase, which opens CONTAMINATION/RESILIENCE, invites 12 artists and collaborators to show existing works and the processes linked to them. The Shedhalle is open for two days and two nights starting on October 23. The audience is invited to fully experience the first protozone and actively participate in it. During the low intensity phase, the works can be seen on the weekends through December 6, accompanied by regular events.

Participating Artists: Lou Drago, Anna Ehrenstein + House of Tupamaras, Nina Emge, Nicholas Grafia + Mikołaj Sobczak, Dominique Koch, Shaun Motsi, Omsk Social Club, Stéph + Tina Yemi Reden, Sabrina Röthlisberger, Lauryn Youden.

In the gallery space, the exhibited works evoke different states of consciousness. They propose speculation on playful platforms, and they encourage the application and exchange of knowledge. The pieces invite visitors to work together, to trace connections and interplays, and they promote experiencing and feeling connections from different perspectives.

Detailed program coming soon.

Programmed by Philipp Bergmann and

Thea Reifler for Shedhalle