Protozone7 at Shedhalle Zürich is dedicated to the realm of non-work, creating zones for invisible processes that take place when we rest, laugh, love and non-work. Such zones have become an endangered species. Their ecologies thrive on abundance and generosity. They don’t want anything from you in return. These zones are there as themselves, full yet never complete, meshworks of possibilities that allow for stillness, pause, rest. Time is a scarcity yet mysteriously enough, there is more than enough of it here.

The artistic practices assembled here deal with the often painful yet still romanticized blurring of life and work. Over the last two years, questions around the infrastructures of life and work have been resurfacing more frequently. While modes of production such as the ‘homeoffice’ are being widely introduced, notions like ‘playbour’ promise a merging of labour, play and leisure into one single activity. Not only is this promise only meant for a few, it also often leads to extensive personal exhaustion.

The walls of Shedhalle are reminiscent of its past as a production site for mechanical silk weaving from the late 19th century, when manual labour within textile fabrication moved from workers individual homes to industrial complexes. Protozone7 takes these moments and shifts in time as a horizon to reconsider old questions such as: How to buffer lives and living from total abstraction and financialization?

The artists invited developed their work within the pandemic. As many of us, they went through moments of crisis, depression, illness, loss, deprivation. They found ways to foster kinships and ecologies that supported these works without giving in to the logics of extraction. This zone hosts their specific and often slow practices, their ongoing engagements and meticulous care towards materials.

with aLifveForms (fed and cared for by JP Raether), Claudia Hill, Kiraṇ Kumār, Nils Amadeus Lange, Liquid Dependencies Theory, Enad Marouf, River Oracle, SABA

curated by Lucie Tuma
curatorial assistance Sophie Germanier, Ani Ekin Özdemir

supported by the Institute for the Performing Arts and Film from Zürcher Hochschule der Künste and supported by IFA – Ausstellungsförderung