Open Futures x Shedhalle

Opening 10.11.21 17:30-21:30 and running until 02.01.22 – Exhibition open every Saturday&Sunday 14-18h

for detailed program please check the “Agenda” on this homepage and on www.openfutures.ch

With: Club La Fafa, Tarik Hayward, Monica Ursina Jäger, Stefanie Knobel and Samrat Banerjee, Architecture for Refugees, Romy Rüegger, Susan Schuppli, Alicia Velázquez

Curation: Isabelle Vuong

Curatorial Assistant: Camille Jamet

The process-based exhibition “Kollektive Resonanz” is dedicated to questions of sustainability and its collective, social as well as cultural dimensions. The works on view are dedicated to open, sometimes fragile, uncertain futures. Many are designed to engage relationships with the public, which will be activated through performances, public research formats, workshops, and diaspora talks.

As a starting point, the exhibition takes the history of the Red Factory as a former silk factory. To this day, isolated architectural elements point to the Rote Fabrik’s silk past. Not least the metallic structures in the Shedhalle building, which served as supports for the spinning machines. The aspect of materiality therefore emerges in many of the artistic works.

Central to Romy Rüegger’s work “A Fabric in Turkey Red” is a cotton fabric dyed bright red. This links the conditions of factory work and labor migration with the colonial legacy of the Swiss textile industry. During her research phase, Rüegger focuses in particular on silk production, which was a characteristic of the canton of Zurich. In doing so, the artist investigates the everyday life of the textile workers in order to deduce their rituals of movement with the silk implements. This research materializes in the form of a performance, which is an integral part of her work.

Club La Fafa’s installation “Where to belong” poses questions about the living situation and challenges of new arrivals and migrants in Zurich. Questions that will shape their biographies for a lifetime and on which they may never get a definitive answer. These questions are printed on textile material and hung on the metallic structures of the former silk factory. In their Community Space Club La Fafa also organizes “Diaspora Talks” on four Sundays during the exhibition.

Tarik Hayward’s monumental and site-specific installation “Coal, Earth, Snow or a Similar Substance” is also a discreet reference to the Rote Fabrik’s past. His work is an ambivalent exploration of craft labor as a creative force and as a survival practice, vacillating between nostalgia for a more rudimentary life and anticipation of future times in a world stripped down to its essentials.

Other works address the impact of climate change on local populations. Stefanie Knobels and Samrat Banerjees “Tropes for Submerged Breathing”, for example, confronts us with the partial inundation of the region around the Bay of Bengal by rising sea levels. To make this future more tangible, they have made gill-like objects out of palm leaves and sewn them into a carpet. This large palm leaf gill textile is meant to visualize the difficult to grasp reality , speculatively and provocatively.

Susan Schuppli, on the other hand, thematizes in her video work “Can the Sun Lie?” the effects of climate change on the Inuit population in the Canadian Arctic. They have made the controversial observation that the sun sets many kilometers further west than it did before. This is because, due to climate change, sunlight behaves differently. In her work, Schuppli presents arguments that show that this observation is indeed of importance for climate research and thus allows a discussion about the evidential value of photographic evidence.

In this context, Monica Ursina Jäger’s video work seems almost meditative. Her video work shows the harmonious, yet fragile interplay of complex aquatic ecosystems and makes visitors aware of the vulnerability of our environment. Through the calm flow of movement as well as the accompanying music, Jäger creates a multi-layered environment that seems detached from space and time.

In the exhibition “Kollektive Resonanz” visitors are constantly confronted with collective actions and approaches from different times and contexts. All those works show that the future is a continuous engagement and it is happening here and now.

The title “Kollektive Resonanz” refers to sociologist Hartmut Rosa’s concept of resonance that defines resonance as the opposite of alienation. For Rosa, being in resonance means being touched by the world in order to be able to respond to it through emotion (e/motion). For Rosa, it is also about attention. So, people should pay more attention to their relationships with themselves and with their environment. The exhibition is an invitation to the visitor to come into resonance with others, with the environment. Because only through this we can find sustainable ways of living together.

The exhibition of Open Futures is supported by: Kanton Zürich Bildende Künste, Ernst Göhner Stiftung, Pro Helvetia, Georg and Bertha Schwyzer-Winiker Stiftung, Ernst und Olga Gubler- Hablützel Stiftung, Fondation Paul-Edouard Piguet, Ville de Lausanne, Erna und Curt Burgauer Stiftung, Stiftung Walter and Inka Ehrbar, Canton de Vaud

Shedhalle is supported by: Stadt Zürich Kultur

Exhibition with: