We often think art’s all about money. Rather, it’s about energy. Immersing yourself in Lake Zurich, a hedge-fund office, a botanical garden, or a land-art piece built on ruins, is it possible to discern an energy particular to art? Art as a form of energy capable of encompassing the whole of life, more powerful than finance and its algorithms? Art as science or speculative fiction? We dwell in castles with Schrödinger’s cat until we give form to the formless: molecules and failed soldiers, art spaces previously owned by the mafia. We share tips about the tricks of the trade—only to intervene, emancipate, culminate, collapse, and (re)emerge. Let us look everywhere for ideas, and let us be gloriously out of touch: may we grow our capacity and courage to love. Catastrophism, miniskirt, particle.
This book arises from the 2019 activities of the MA Fine Arts program at the Zurich University of the Arts. It reflects the conviction that an arts school can be a pedagogical nexus dedicated to the transmission of knowledge, experimentation, and research as much as a locus for civic and critical debate and exhibition, involved in its community, locally and globally.
With texts and artistic contributions by Kevin Aeschbacher, Bene Andrist, Claudia Baena, Donatella Bernardi, Lisa Biedlingmaier, Johanna Bruckner, Martina Buzzi, Notta Caflisch, Graciela Carnevale, Mathieu Copeland, Gritli Faulhaber, Anne-Laure Franchette, Florian Graf, Nadia Graf, Michael Felix Grieder, Tobias Gutmann, Vemo Liwei Hang, Julius Hatt, Tim Hergersberg, Füsun Ipek, Hanieh Jahangiri, Ziqi Jiang, Nicola Kazimir, Pete Keller, Elise Lammer, Yani Li, Kathrin Maliszewski, Nico Sebastian Meyer, Clio Newton, Tabita Rezaire, Ana Roldán, Valentina Sansone, Esther Schena, Denise Schwab, Daniel Schwartz, Alexandra Siegrist, Elza Sile, Susan Steiger, Linda Strähl, Ilona Stutz, Milva Stutz, Salvatore Vitale, Bettina Wachter, Yamu Wang, Yvonne Wilhelm.
The artist as entrepreneur has become a common topic of discussion. Here, however, we put forward the notions of “self” and “system.” First, every artistic practice is self-reflexive and self-contextualizing. Second, each system an artist builds allows for innovation. Let’s construct a space where we inevitably find ourselves together with others, even if we feel lonely, like a witch lost in a library of artists’ books. Let’s invent our right to do so. Let’s enter the world of smell and write about a megalomaniac art school while documenting a generation of art students and their studios with analogue photography. How does anyone even manage—from making objects to performing one’s own existence? Device, organon, animal.
328 pages, Sternberg Press, 2019
ISBN 978-3-956794-88-9
Art & Crisis. A Polyphonic Research on the Contemporary | Donatella Bernardi (ed.)
CHF 28.00
Polyphonic research into contemporary, Art & Crisis» is the first volume of a new series aiming to explore the state of the world and cultural theories as seen through the lens of contemporary artistic practices and educational tools. Stemming from the Master Fine Arts at the Zurich University of the Arts, and edited by MFA director Donatella Bernardi, the series’ ambition is to replace the traditional “degree show” catalogue with a theoretical publication showing the path followed by the students-turned-artists over the course of the year, and to explore how an educational institution based in Zurich can locate itself within the global (art) world.
320 pages, jrp|Ringier, 2018
ISBN 978-3-03764-525-3
Auf die Welt kommen | Plattform Kulturpublizistik, ZHdK (Hg.)
CHF 38.00
Geschichten des Widerstands
Mit Texten von Sibylle Berg, Tanja Maljartschuk, Milo Rau, Corinne Riedener, Hans Widmer
Im Oktober 2020 findet eine Studentin im Nachlass ihrer verstorbenen Tante ein Büchlein mit rätselhaften Einträgen. Wie sich zeigt, haben fünf Frauen im Zeitraum von 1877 bis 1992 und an Brennpunkten wie der Russischen und der Deutschen Revolution, dem Spanischen Bürgerkrieg und den Jugoslawienkriegen ihre Erlebnisse und Gedanken in das Notizbuch eingetragen. Ihre Berichte und Gedanken drehen sich um die Frage des Widerstands, wenn eine Welt am Abgrund steht.
Photography and Writing as an Experience, Experiment and Insight
The focus of this narrative-analytical text-photo-montage is the so-called Wendezeit in East Germany, the years after the reunification and the individual and collective outbreaks of violence that accompanied thisradical change. Based on personal experiences and trained on literary and theoretical works such as Alexander Kluge’s Lebensläufe, Klaus Theweleit’s Männerphantasien or W.G. Sebald’s novel Austerlitz, Kai Ziegner reflects on remembrance and testimony in a way that is as critical as it is experimental.
Autorschaft in den Künsten | Corina Caduff, Tan Wälchli (Hg.) Zürcher Jahrbuch der Künste
«Autorschaft» ist seit einigen Jahren ein viel diskutierter Begriff. Das Thema ist nach wie vor sehr aktuell, denn zweifellos ist das Verständnis von Autorschaft angesichts der fortschreitenden Digitalisierungsprozesse gegenwärtig heftig in Bewegung. Welche Auswirkungen haben diese Prozesse auf die Selbstwahrnehmung von Künstler*innen? Gilt der Topos vom «Tod des Autors» immer noch, und wie verlaufen die Kämpfe um Macht und Autorschaftsrechte heute? Diese Debatten werden hier erstmals im Rahmen sämtlicher Künste geführt. Künstler*innen und Wissenschaftler*innen – vom Konzertpianisten über die Designforscherin und den Filmemacher bis hin zur Architekturtheoretikerin – präsentieren analytische Reflexionen sowie Beispiele aus der aktuellen Praxis aus Architektur, Design, Film, Kunst, Literatur, Musik, Theater.
