Excursion, 25 August 2016
Speaker & Guides: Marc Latzel, Photographer & Alex Bücheli, Safer Clubbing/Nachtstadtrat/Bar- und Clubkommission Zürich & Niels Michel, ERZ Zurich (Disposal & Cleaning Department, City of Zurich) & Owner Club “Klaus”
Walk around Langstrasse, one of the central districts of Zurich (Kreis 4/5), earlier known as the red light disctrict, still known as the nightlife centre of the city, but more and more gentrified today. The walk should cluster two central and also contrasting aspects of Zurich, which are cleanliness/normativity/strategies of disciplining on one hand and drugs/excess/nightlife on the other. The walk included visits at various public spots and backyards, a meeting with a club owner in a club and ended up at Letten, where the world famous open drug scene of Zurich used to be, which is used as a public river bath today.
Statements Participants
Jesica
It’s permitted all that doesn’t interfere.
The introduction of this iconic phrase, part of the discipline strategies of the city of Zürich, provokes in me questions about it’s subjectivity: Permission and/or Interference according to whom? … interference with what? Questions about how much is it applied by the viewers because of fear, moral, social-commitment, etc. And questions about… which role would I be: the subject or the object of this sentence?
Wendy
The word “Essential” just pop up when I was thinking of “beyond purity” and walked pass a fountain. The city of Zurich cares and provides essential supplements for everyone for free. Which actually bounds each one together, we share the essentials, yet we lived so differently.
Terence
Yannik
Historische Zäune sind immer noch Zäune Zürich arbeitet an seiner Bräune Wo früher Junkies und Nadeln lagen Genießt man heute Sonnenstrahlen Raum in Raum für laute Bässe Raum in Raum als Schlafstätte Mauer bau'n um verseuchte Erde [...]
Jade
Drugs are part of our / their society So Don’t / Can’t let homeless to be visible in the public space / city That is Typical Zurich’s approach Therefore Make our / their dead neighbourhood more lively
Andreas
graffiti yes, littering no
Morphine
Beyond purity is to embrace the impurity.
Getting in between.
Hide and seek.
Accepting that some negative sides of society is also part of the society.
Accepting new and alien, blending them in.
Like a reflection mirror, seek out the similarity from the other and from ourselves.