Shedhalle as a space for process-based art

Processes are a tool to open up unknown spaces of thinking and action. It is at the core of our work. We continue a history that allowed authority to be transferred from artists and institutions to the audience. Art takes part in the creation of actual communities.

The world is shifting, and art institutions are charged with negotiating social questions. Hence platforms, which dynamically promote social, technological and ecological change are increasingly important.

Essential issues converge in the cultural sector: debates around the inability to act politically, the empowerment of previously marginalised groups, and ecological sustainability. Museums, festivals, and theatres are laboratories for change and testing grounds for utopias. In this, we see the purpose of Shedhalle, and we respond to the need for new strategies of exhibition-making.

The idea behind process-based art begins with experimentations in the middle of the 20th century, i.e. the era when genres were dissolved in favour of a new conception of art. The genesis of the work was just as important as the final product—if not more so. Painters staged themselves in the process, sculptures became polyvalent entities, theatre approached performance art and the other way around.

The new definition of the artwork has left its mark on theatre and on music, and the integration of different media is by now a standard procedure of contemporary art. However, the permeability of works and disciplines cannot be told as a simple story of progress, much less as a neatly defined narrative, because it is due to much larger social, political, and cultural changes.

The Protozone as a format for process-based art

To consciously incorporate this thought in an art institution, we developed a new format: the Protozone. It gives space to collaboration and to exhibitions, whose openness is still visible. The Protozone can accommodate any form of art, and it gives room for workshops and scholarship, which in turn engage in a process with other elements in the zone.

The Protozones at Shedhalle are designed to be inclusive, and they enable the collaboration of artists and people with different backgrounds. They allow for slow and persistent action, they create a space where processes can unfold.

Shedhalle and its Protozones are places for unconventional practices and for experiments. They give a platform to artists who work in different disciplines, and whose complex biographies and identities we want to accommodate. We perceive the Protozone as a starting point for a community of artists and activists who do not conform to the demands of the art market.

Each year, there are four Protozones. They have their own topics and follow their own rules. They are subdivided into two phases. The first phase lasts from a few days up to a week, and it is supposed to initiate artistic processes and to activate installations and works. The house stays open during this time, the artists are present, existing artworks and situations are being presented and developed, new ones are being produced. The practice itself becomes visible.

In terms of intensity and immersion, the first week resembles an exhibition that has been opened too early. The second week recalls a conventional presentation, which is accompanied by a programme of events. In addition, each Protozone leaves something. Artefacts and texts will be preserved in the freely accessible archive of the Shedhalle.

The term Protozone has a twofold origin. The Greek prefix proto- signifies a preliminary or an early stage. Phonetically, the word recalls the protozoon—Greek for “the first animal”—a single cell organism that carries the potential of future evolution.

Another association is the zone, which is, beyond urbanism and land use, a recurring concept in science fiction. Zones, in this context, are frequently areas with rules of their own, where utopia seems possible.

Collaboration

The Protozone is not purely speculative. It is a means of anchoring the idea of process in the institution itself. Besides cooperations with international artists, we collaborate with artists from all parts of Switzerland, local initiatives and institutions—including the fields of technology, science, and activism—to connect our activities to the immediate surroundings.

With this, we continue Shedhalle’s history. The institution has its origin in historical struggles for autonomous spaces in Zurich. Our aims include the coexistence in a post-migrant, open society, as well as ecological sustainability, in order to continue the negotiation of social and artistic processes.

Managing Direction:

Miriam Haltiner

Artistic Direction:

Thea Reifler

Philipp Bergmann

Curatorial Board:

Isabelle Vuong
Lucie Tuma

Michelangelo Miccolis

Executive Board Shedhalle:

Siri Peyer

Sarah Mehler
Dominique Jud
Peter Haerle
Rahel El-Maawi
Theresa Chen
Marcel Bleuler

Communication:

Ann Mbuti

Accounting:

Sara Gasteiger

Supervising:

Caroline Cerbaro

Isabella Girtanner

Andreas Kleemann
et al.

If you join our association as a member or patron, you support us financially and ideally. In order to realize our events, exhibitions and external projects, we are dependent on private financing. The contributions of our members and patrons cover an important part of our project expenses.

As a member you receive:

Free entrance to all exhibitions and events of Shedhalle

Participation and voting rights at the general meeting
Free admission to more than 15 Swiss art institutions
Invitations and information about the exhibitions and member events
Discounts on publications of Shedhalle
We ask for your opinion
You support contemporary art <3

Annual contribution:

Private persons CHF 40.-/CHF 65.-/CHF 110.- at choice or any other chosen amount/Institutions CHF 120.-/
for free for under 18 years old

Shedhalle on the premises of Rote Fabrik

Rote Fabrik was built in 1892 as a mechanical silk weaving mill. As was usual for industrial buildings of the time, sawtooth roofs (so-called shed roofs according to the English shed patent) provided the necessary daylight for the production halls.

After several changes of ownership* and temporary vacancies, the city of Zurich acquired Rote Fabrik in 1972 with the plan to widen the adjacent Seestrasse after demolition of the buildings. However, the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Democratic Party successfully intervened against these plans with a popular initiative. The factory was to be preserved. In 1977, the voters commissioned the city council to draw up a proposal for the use of the Rote Fabrik as a cultural and leisure center. Three years later, youth unrest accelerated the creation of the alternative cultural center “Rote Fabrik”.

The exhibition space Shedhalle was founded in 1985 by Trakt B, the association of artists with studios in the Rote Fabrik, which was founded in 1982. As local artists they were underrepresented in the established art system. By winning the vote for the Rote Fabrik as a cultural centre at the end of 1987, the city made independence a condition, which is why the Shedhalle Association was founded in the spring of 1988 and established permanent positions for curators and management.

Programmatics

At the beginning of 1994 there was a fundamental revision of the programmatic concept of Shedhalle. The overriding goal of this revision was to open the program to more unconventional forms of art education and to interdisciplinary cooperation with other social and scientific organizations.

In order to do justice to this goal, the team was to be composed of staff members who had already worked at the interface between art, discursive procedures and political commitment. Within the framework of a communicative and egalitarian working philosophy, the curatorial team was involved in operational matters and the management in curatorial matters. Furthermore, the curatorial team was staffed with two to three curators of equal standing working collectively.

Curatorial Practice

In order to pave the way for a different exhibition practice, Shedhalle had to become a place where not only the products but also their working and exchange relationships in which they are created are shown. This implied that the examination of the political conditions and circumstances of art production and reception became an integral part of the work in Shedhalle.

The aim was to examine the conventional concept of art and to counter it with alternatives. Thus, the exhibition “Nature™” (1995) was staged as a sales fair where artistic, social and political projects – which emancipatorily deal with so-called New Technologies – could be presented. Or in a project on pornography and prostitution, “Gewerbeschein Künstlerin” (1995), which was dedicated to the connection between commercial advertising strategies and pornography/prostitution as well as the examination of these topics within the “operating system art”. During the project “8 Wochen Klausur” (1994), the Shedhalle became the workplace for a group of artists/activists who became involved in Zurich’s drug policy with two projects. In this context, art should make effective contributions to current issues and not isolate itself from any social and political reality.

Shedhalle succeeded in attracting great international attention with its program and became an important reference point for an experimental, socio-critical, contemporary art practice.

Shedhalle and Rote Fabrik have always been places for processes that have bundled the city’s potential to enable new artistic formats as well as social forms. With the new artistic orientation 2020-2025, the Shedhalle is to become a space for process-based art in Zurich and Switzerland.

Previous
Curators:

Guest Curators
(1985 – 1986)

Luigi Kurmann
(1986 – 1987)

Harm Lux
(1988 – 1993)

Renate Lorenz
(1994 – 1997)

Sylvia Kafehsy
(1994 – 1997)

Marion von Osten
(1996 – 1998)

Ursula Biemann
(1995 – 1998)

Justin Hoffmann
(1997 – 2000)

Elke aus dem Moore
(1999 – 2002)

Frederikke Hansen
(2000 – 2004)

Sønke Gau
(2004 – 2009)

Katharina Schlieben
(2004 – 2009)

Anke Hoffmann
(2009 – 2012)

Yvonne Volkart
(2009 – 2012)

Can Gülcü
(2012 – 2014)

Katharina Morawek
(2012 – 2017)

Egija Inzule
(2017-2018)

Annette Amberg
(2017 – 2018)

Paolo Do
(2017 – 2018)

Salvatore Lacagnina
(2017 – 2018)

Adriana Lara
(2017 – 2018)

Mirjam Bayerdörfer
(2019-2020)

Franz Krähenbühl
(2019-2020)

You can rent Shedhalle for non-public events like seminars, workshops, small celebrations and gatherings. Available dates are throughout the months of December and January, but sometimes also at other times of the year.

Please contact us for detailed information.

A trip from the 80s to today…

The Shedhalle archive and a library are physically located in Shedhalle. For the archive, a cooperation with the Swiss Social Archive in Zurich was agreed upon. The archive holdings will be successively digitised and transferred to the Social Archive over the next few years. The library will remain in the Shedhalle and will be made accessible there again.

A visit is possible at any time – please contact us here.

An overview of the material and access to past websites is to be found in the online-catalogue.