Which traces are yours? Which are mine? Where do they connect? Whether their origins are internal or external, all traces are deeply tied to the traces of others, forming a collective system of memory, which exerts influence on groups and individuals, often in unforeseen ways. The installation “living traces” invited visitors to introspect, connect and leave traces, to engage as much as they would like and explore the interconnectedness of remembering bodies.
An Orchid is not just a flower but an accumulation of layers of claims, projections and violence within and through time. Defined by a name, categorization, and stories about heroes and hunters it becomes a symbol for things it has not given its consent to.
A piece of driftwood is perhaps too big for one. It is shared amongst three friends, who build everything they could out of it. Lots of items, stories, memories and time – contained in a shed. A piece of driftwood that was once borrowed. It has provided and it has given. And now, it has been returned.
The multi-speaker sound installation conceived by Xu Chia-Chun, Jamira Estrada and Piero Scherer explored the interplay between shelter and isolation, protection and constraint. It invited the visitors to navigate a space where the boundaries of inside and outside, protection and limitation blur into an evocative soundscape.
Drawing on many influences, from displacement systems to futuristic utopian scenarios and habitual reflection, “Anthropocene” explores power structures in the context of sacrifice zones, dwelling upon the fragile equilibrium of protecting and using land and the unequal consequences that the waste of resources produce.
„Polypulse“ deals with the topic of protection through creating a vulnerable and intimate experience between strangers in a city environment. The audience is invited to come close, feel their heartbeat in the backdrop of the city noise and negotiate what it means to be part of a vibrating moment of shared experience.
The inside of the protecting greenhouse is warm, welcoming, a necessary condition for some of its living beings. However, the creatures living under its shelter may unknowingly start to deform. Protection turns into corrosion. They go from resisting to losing their self-care ability, eventually leading to a sense of hopelessness. This decaying metamorphosis could be considered a conspiracy theory. But how would we be able to truly know?
Installation and audio The work “In Remembrance” investigated the memory of being protected as a child in the sweet comfort of a pillow fort. A comfort that originates from the feeling of being protected inside, separated from an “uncanny” outside. A condition that made us feel safe as kids but seems less comforting and starts to crumble, when we turn our attention to different ways that border keeping logics unfold in today’s society. Together Lucy HO TSZ LONG, Matthias NAEGELI, Larissa PLATZ, Aparupa SAHA and Vincent VAN DER DONK created a work that comprises a deconstructed installation of a pillow fort, with accompanying background sounds and vocals inside. The outside had a patchwork of quilts, sheets, printed blankets, a pillow draped around it – everything that goes into constructing a pillow fort. While the visitor could stand underneath a hanging structure like a protective shelter to climb underneath, their lower half stayed exposed. Once inside, they would hear a poem about childhood memories, about being inside and outside, dripping on them from a hanging sound shower. …
Installation and sound composition The installation “The rose” created an illusionary space for visitors, where they imagine themselves traveling between different realities. It dealt with the sense of cultural distance and alienation that emerges from different individual realities and social surroundings. Laris BÄUCKER, Jamira ESTRADA, Jing HAN and Anh PHUONG created an interconnected experience of space and sound. A complex structure of fabrics and wool threads that moved parallel to each other, intertwined and strung together, creating an embodied sensation of entanglement configured the visual part of “The rose”. The auditory part was a musical arrangement of three poems in different languages. Laying under “The rose” wearing headphones and emerging themselves in the fragmented construction of musical arrangement and poems the visitors could observe the suspended sculpture and move on the threshold of several realities and perceptions. The work emphasized different levels of realities, that sometimes may connect or show as diametrically opposed daily lives. Protection here meant both respecting and understanding each other’s levels of reality, but it also meant to unsettle boundaries, find empathy, …
A performative sonic and visual landscape Ray FREY, Ai De YANG, Julia SHU and Piero SCHERER collaboratively created a sonic and visual landscape “Websy”, where everything was connected to something, but nothing was connected to everything. A space where tools, artifacts and rare finds got entangled through an intertwined web of cables, film stripes and strings. A space where performers and visitors, sound and objects, came together to craft their own ecosystem. A system in which one must learn to give space and listen to each other to build new connections and combinations that preserve the system. Over the span of a week the group set up their base in one of the rooms of the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK). With each day and each new find their engaging landscape grew. Visitors then were invited to a performance to see and hear this somehow chaotic, somehow organized, somehow intuitive, somehow encrypted structure while the performers improvised their way through the landscape. It was not possible to understand everything at once, to decipher, cable by …
Interactive Installation Conceived by Leonie DITTLI, Esme Chuyi WANG, Xi Jie WANG, Lucia Salomé GRÄNICHER “Sleeping peels” invites the visitors to reflect their bodily experiences in a vulnerable state of rest centered around sleeping appliances such as medication and the mattress. The latter is a witness to all the bodies that have lied on it. It is the sight of dreams, emotions, and sweat. While sleeping you unburden your thoughts, anxieties and everything that is not seen under your daily shield of protection. Leaving you in a state of vulnerability that is rare but can also be taken advantage of. Right there the market steps in and promises you goods and methods to improve your sleep. Via monitoring and collecting data on your sleep cycle, via offering you the pharmaceutical tools to better protect your sleep? “Sleeping peels” invited to lay, to trace, to smell. In front of a staged mattress one could find a pile of sleeping pills made out of chalk. The label of the mattress provided the visitors with instructions. It read: Take …
Multimedia digital and site-specific installation Originating from many influences from Rapunzel to Zurich’s churches to the Panopticon, “Approaching Tower” explores the complex social power structures that are embedded in the architecture and the symbolism of towers. As a diptych of physical scenography and virtual reality created by Leo BARTON, Ho Man HO, Tak Tsung NG and Martha OELSCHLÄGER, the work presents multiple modes of dissecting the image of a tower and its many manifestations. Physically, visitors could ascend and descend the site-specific stairwell dressed with protective chains, referring to the suicide protection net found on Blauer Turm. With the help of VR-glasses the visitors were virtually able to emerge themselves to the foot of a composite church and communications tower listening to a reactive soundscape. Interrogating the multifaceted and contradictory symbol of the tower, this piece began with the question “when does protection become threatening itself?”. A question which heavily depends on perspective and alignment, negotiating the thresholds between preservation and over-protection, ideology and social control. This cross-disciplinary project brought together the participants expertise in …
Performance, 20 min. 𝘍𝘳𝘰𝘮 protection 𝘵𝘰 connection 𝘵𝘰 communication, 𝘢 𝘴𝘮𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦 𝘢𝘧𝘧𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘴 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨. 𝘛𝘩e 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦 Wabisabi, conceived and performed by Christian Del CONTE, Senri SUZUI, Raymond FREY and Guan-Ying HU, 𝘭𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘢𝘶𝘥𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘦𝘹𝘱𝘭𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘦𝘹𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘱𝘦𝘢𝘤𝘦 𝘢𝘧𝘵𝘦𝘳 being exposed to the uncanniness 𝘰𝘧 𝘥𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘵𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯. Based on the 𝘉𝘈𝘉𝘌𝘓 𝘛𝘖𝘞𝘌𝘙 𝘚𝘛𝘖𝘙𝘠 the group reflected on different modes and 𝘣𝘦𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘪𝘰𝘳𝘴 protection brings about. The performance was set in a installation made out of 𝘵𝘸𝘪𝘨𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘤𝘰𝘵𝘵𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘴, associated with “𝘣𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘭𝘦” 𝘢𝘯𝘥 “𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘯𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯”, 𝘢𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘦𝘥𝘪𝘶𝘮 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘥𝘦𝘴𝘤𝘳𝘪𝘣𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘥 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘦𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘣𝘢𝘴𝘪𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘺. The accompanying musical 𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦-𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘳𝘩𝘺𝘵𝘩𝘮 𝘬𝘦𝘦𝘱t 𝘨𝘳𝘰𝘸𝘪𝘯𝘨 during the performance and worked like an intensifier while the performers slowly started to cut down the installation in a ritual act. R𝘦𝘧𝘭𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘣𝘪𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 humanity nowadays the performance posed the question: What i𝘧 𝘸𝘦 𝘨𝘰 𝘣𝘢𝘤𝘬 𝘵𝘰 𝘢 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘯𝘰 𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘶𝘢𝘨𝘦…. 𝘛𝘩𝘦 creative 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘤𝘦𝘴𝘴 involved c𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘵𝘳𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘵𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘤𝘶𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴. The final presentation was the first and only full performance, therefore the group …
