A group exhibition with Lisa Biedlingmaier, San Keller, and Maria Pomiansky in collaboration with Vadim Levin

curated by Dimitrina Sevova and Alan Roth,
curatorial interns Miwa Negoro and Swati Prasad.

Saturday, 21 January – Sunday, 19 February 2017

Opening: Saturday, 21 January at 18:00h
Finissage: Sunday, 19 February at 17:00h

Artist talks and other accompanying events to be announced.

Opening Hours
Wed/Fri 15:00h – 18:00h
Thu 16:00h – 19:00h

The exhibition/project will take place in two parts, of which this is the first:
Part 1: Critique de l’économie politique de l’atelier d'artiste
Part 2: Der Prozess / The Trial



Part 1: Critique de l’économie politique de l’atelier d'artiste

The focal point is on the relation between the studio, artist labor, art-work, aesthetic practices and their economic conditions. The studio might be a space where a certain degree of autonomy can be detected. The exhibition/project expresses how productivity in art depends on the relation between the artist’s liberty and the economic and social conditions of art production. The studio is part of the productive flow of relations, subjectivities, institutions, places, materials, techniques. At the same time it is in the grammar of autonomy, aesthetics and politics. There are many possible places and non-places of the studio, but it can still be put mainly in two orbits, as an independent space of a solitude where the artwork is produced, and a more open idea of the studio, where the artwork is performed by artist-labor. It is often a shared space, a space of collaboration that engages with the performative domain of the aesthetics and politics of art production and its economic and social reality.

Lacan’s statement “I replaced Freud’s energetics with political economy” goes one step further and openly engages psychoanalysis with the ‘immanent’ critique of liberal capitalist society. Following psychoanalytic practices, the project Part I: Critique de l’économie politique de l’atelier d’artiste incorporates ‘immanent’ critique in the politico-economic relations in the production of art to reflect and analyze in terms of movements and vectors the current conditions of artist-labor and art-work-life social relations.

It also adopts the critique of the political economy as a method to look at the studio space and the practices there, its social and political impact on art, on the labor and life of the artist. To what extent can the studio support the autonomy of the artist’s practices, and what is its emancipatory political potential? Giorgio Agamben attributes to the Situationists an “unavowed awareness that the genuinely political element consists precisely in this incommunicable, almost ridiculous clandestinity of private life.” The art labor and art-work are inevitably incorporated in the critique of a broad socio-economic process. At the same time, they will remain ‘ridiculously clandestine’ attitudes of free labor outside of the labor-power. In this way the project looks at how a return to critique and autonomy practices can perpetuate an emancipatory politics in art. They can be used as a model for an exit from the ‘hegemonic’ capitalist discourse and capitalist production of value. Autonomy practices, aesthetic immanent critique and politics invent new living forms and socio-economic relations outside of capital, like generic commons, undercommons, etc.

The project reflects on self-organized and self-managed aspects of the artist studio space, the conditions of the artist’s labor and the productive process of art-work there. Work is here used not necessarily to designate an art object. The working environment of the studio can be seen from many angles. At the same time, it remains a place where (un)productive forces play disalienated forms of labor in the work and life of the artists. The artist remains a free laborer who betrays the labor-power and slows down, or accelerates a virtuoso productivity.

The project inevitably asks, can the artist make a living from their art? How can they sustain their working environment relying on income from their artistic labor and art-work. Often, they inhabit the studio mostly in the time in-between several other jobs, while the studio is transformed and adapted to multitasked functions driven by project-oriented work, digitalization and internet. The productive process is automated between two applications for grants, in a diversity of institutional commands by e-mail and research work mostly based on Google searches. Being an artist is a day-to-day job of professional occupation, and at the same time a form of life that can scatter into a new sociality.

At the same time there is indeed a reality gap between the image of the autonomous artist and the actual working conditions of living artists, and how their productivity and the conditions of art production are socially evaluated and valued, between the relative ‘autonomy’ of the studio and today’s institutionally driven art, complemented by the erosion of the autonomy of art by different neoliberal dynamics and the restructuring (financialization, digitalization, gentrification) and the ideology of the free market that inevitably machinically signifies the social production and art, too. Although the artist precariat is potentially revolutionary and resistive, Hito Steyerl describes the instrumental precarization in the third stage of institutional critique that leads merely to “integration into precarity” of artist labor and working and living conditions. “What remains hidden in this – a new ‘hidden abode,’ the practicing artist remains outside of the employment.” At the same time, nowadays the art production process has been connected to digital productive flows, automated and highly professionalized by accelerated competition on a global scale, that disempowers the possibilities for collective, community forms of art, work and life.


Theorem 4. Aesthetic Agency and the Practices of Autonomy

The operations of Moral and Politics, Aesthetics and Immanent Critique, invite a re-thinking in the sense of the moral fight (Nietzsche), as Gilles Deleuze puts it in his essay about Foucault: “A man-form, then, appears only in very special and precarious conditions,” as a dissolved man. All form is a combination of all forces, a mix of human and non-human in the process of individuation. This precarious man-form is the extra-human ethical being of politics. Indeed, in Deleuze and Guattari’s words, “Politics precedes being. Practice does not come after the emplacement of the terms and their relations, but actively participates in the drawing of the lines; it confronts the same dangers and the same variations as the emplacement does.”

The notion of autonomy is investigated and reflected from various perspectives, without a model, as it takes place in the realms of aesthetics and of politics, in the social and the personal, art and practices. Autonomy is distinct from knowledge. As an intensification of power it regroups and redistributes. Despite this, the term of Autonomy has become increasingly derided in art and criticised as egotistical or even attributed to the hegemonic western ideology of the individual, as a result of the connection between the autonomy of art and the autonomy of the artist, and the equalization of both to aesthetic autonomy.

Aesthetic autonomy goes beyond the art context to embrace life as a whole. Aesthetic experience as a practice of philosophy has never been necessarily attached to the field of art and the artwork, and has mutated to the concepts of aesthetics of existence and of life as a work of art (in Foucault’s conceptualization) – “existing not as a subject but as a work of art.” The aesthetics of the ephemeral of the event of political subjectivity and of temporary autonomous zones are dispositions of time or of a brain. They draw “new cerebral pathways, new ways of thinking.” As Deleuze says: “I think subjectification, events, and brains are more or less the same thing.” What can emerge from these practices is the creative struggle that is resistance and invention. Art is resistance, too. These new subjectivities are precarious minor social formations, and to the extent that the artist is part of the precariat in the informal economy, they practice aesthetic autonomy, too. Peter Osborne writes that “aesthetic autonomy is indifferent to the art/non-art distinction,” which is close to Jacques Rancière: “To the extent that the aesthetic formula ties art to non-art from the start, it sets that life up between two vanishing points: art becoming mere life or art becoming mere art.” 


Excerpt from the curatorial text by Dimitrina Sevova in collaboration with Alan Roth (in printable format as PDF, 276KB)



Lisa Biedlingmaier

undefined
2014. HD video.



For centuries, the studio has been perceived not only in its pragmatic function as a workshop or thought laboratorium but to a much larger extent as a place in which the premises of individual artistic identity can be fathomed.

The interior, whether a home office or a study room, provides clues to the personality living or working there.


Das Atelier wurde über Jahrhunderte nicht nur in seiner pragmatischen Funktion als Werkstätte oder gedankliches Laboratorium registriert, sondern in viel grösserem Masse als ein Ort empfunden, an dem die Prämissen für die individuelle künstlerische Identität ergründet werden können.

Das Interieur, ob Privatzimmer oder Arbeitszimmer liefere Indizien über die in ihm wohnende bzw. arbeitende Persönlichkeit.



San Keller

At Work (Cuckoo)



In At Work (Cuckoo) lässt sich San Keller von seinen Künstlerfreunden in deren Ateliers und an deren Arbeit fotografieren.


The L-Word - No mas metales
2015. HD video, 56 min.

Der Schweizer Konzeptkünstler San Keller (1971) reist mit der Absicht nach Los Angeles, auf der Strasse einen Kunstsammler anzutreffen, der ein Werk der amerikanischen Pop-Art-Ikone Andy Warhol (1928-1987) aus seiner Sammlung gegen sämtliche Werke des politischen Zeichners und Karikaturisten Martin Disteli (1802-1844) im Besitz des Kunstmuseum Olten tauschen würde.

Auf seinen Streifzügen rund um Hollywood entfernt sich San Keller immer weiter vom ursprünglichen Ziel, einen Sammler zu finden, der einen Warhol gegen den Oltner Disteli-Nachlass tauschen würde. In den Vordergrund rückt stattdessen die Suche – die Suche an sich, oder aber die Suche nach dem Bild. The L-Word - No mas metales ist jedoch auch eine filmische Reflexion über ein mysteriöses L-Word (Los Angeles, Liebe, Langeweile, Loch oder Liberalismus?), über die Suggestionskraft von Bildern, die Macht des Geldes und vor allem über die Freiheit - die Kernthemen Distelis also.



Maria Pomiansky in collaboration with Vadim Levin

In situ studio



What is the role of the painter's atelier in contemporary art practice? The archaic features are mixed with the needs of today's life. A painter 's atelier is one of the last bastions of non-computer activities. It can be interpreted as a manifestation of humanity. And it’s not by chance that technique is put back on stage and reworked through the lenses of conceptual art to produce paintings that elaborate on the reality surrounding us.

I would like to produce a painting which would change during the time of the exhibition and would be an attempt to view the atelier as a sacral symbol, a game where the human brain, the hand and the eyes play the leading roles.

Mapping Graphic Design History in Switzerland is not just another book that retells the success story of Swiss graphic design. It is a collection of eleven selected essays deriving from academic research that explores historical dimensions of graphic design in Switzerland – from producing it, to archiving and exhibiting it.

The book is also an endeavor to open up a space for graphic design history by providing new perspectives, ideas and tools that enable historical research in such a crucial field for Switzerland as graphic design and typography.

On this occasion, the editors Davide Fornari and Robert Lzicar and publisher Triest invite you to celebrate the launch of the book. A presentation of the book will be followed by a number of talks by contributors and sponsors on why they did support / contribute. The evening will end with a toast on the publication.

Program

19:00–19:10 Greeting: Kerstin Forster (publisher at Triest Verlag)
19:10–19:30 Presentation of the book: Davide Fornari, Robert Lzicar (editors of “Mapping Graphic Design History in Switzerland”)
19:30–19:40 Speaker 1: Sarah Owens (ZHdK and Swiss Design Network SDN)
19:40–19:50 Speaker 2: Marina Oliveira (Designer of Visual Essays, Graphic Designer, Zurich)
19:50–20:00 Speaker 3: Peter Vetter (Coande, ZHdK)
20:00–20:10 Speaker 4: Bettina Richter (Poster Collection, MfG - auf Deutsch/in German)
20:10–20:15 Questions & Statements
20:15–21:00 Apéro

Davide Fornari is associate professor at ECAL University of Art and Design in Lausanne, where he leads the research and development sector. He has previously been teacher and researcher at SUPSI University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland.

Robert Lzicar is a designer, educator and researcher. At the HKB Bern University of the Arts, he is head of the MA Communication Design, researcher at the Department of R+D Communication Design, and professor of design history.

Zum Feierabend ein Freibier für alle die heute nicht blau gemacht haben.

This event is part of the exhibition project Theorem 4. Aesthetic Agency and the Practices of Autonomy. Part I: Critique de l’économie politique de l’atelier d'artiste.

Book Launch “Happy Tropics” with Michael Schindhelm (author, culture adviser, theatre and film maker), Damian Christinger (curator, Zurich University of the Arts) and students of Zurich University of the Arts.

This book is an attempt to translate new understandings of transcultural connections into a dialogue. Contributions and insights by important actors in the cultural field such as Eugene Tan, Rem Koolhaas, Benson Puah, June Yap, Gwee Li Sui, and Philip Ursprung, Michael Schindhelm and Damian Christinger frame research by students from the Zurich University of the Arts, and create a multi-voiced and multi-faceted approach to understanding the rapidly-changing cultural topographies of Singapore.

Happy Tropics I consists of two parts that run (literally) parallel throughout the book. The first section, “Why Singapore,” focuses on insights from outside the city state, and consists of a conversation between Rem Koolhaas and Michael Schindhelm, an essay by Philip Ursprung, and an artistic contribution by the U5 art collective, among the contributions by the students of the Zurich University of the arts. The second section, “Learning from Singapore,” gives room to different voices from within, featuring interviews with Glen Goei, Beh Swan Gin, Benson Puah, Eugene Tan, and an essay by Gwee Li Sui.

As Singapore becomes a global leader in both the financial and knowledge-production sectors, increasing emphasis is being put on both the production and dissemination of culture in the island-state. While it was still regarded as an “emerging country” two decades ago, it has become one of the leading nations regarding infrastructure, urbanisation, and service industries. The question as to whether arts and culture will follow suit is being closely followed by other nations worldwide who aspire to similar developmental goals. Singapore can be thought of as a kind of laboratory for the enabling, production, education, and consumption of arts and culture. Understanding culture as a mirror of society, instrument of national identification, and site for dialogue and exchange with other cultures allows us to view it as a litmus test for the resilience of an unprecedented societal concept.

Within this framework, Happy Tropics I can be seen as a case study and a laboratory for different approaches to dealing with the challenges of globalization, as the cultural topographies of Singapore are not only changing, but also constituting themselves in our timeframe. Understanding the city as a responsive network that can be harnessed for research and education projects reflects this reality, and encouraged us to come with our students from the Zurich University of the Arts to Singapore, delving into its mesh and trying to learn that seeing eye to eye is so much more important then perceived hierarchies, a concept that is also reflected in the design and structure of this book.

Happy Tropics I is a publication by Michael Schindhelm and Damian Christinger in collaboration with the Zurich University of the Arts, and is classified as the Connecting Spaces Document # 10.

http://www.connectingspaces.ch/happy-tropics-book-launch-2/

18:30h doors open
19:00h panel discussion

Die Podiumsdiskussion findet auf Deutsch und Englisch statt.
The panel discussion will be held in German and in English.


[English below]

Tonjaschja Adler, Delphine Chapuis Schmitz, Vreni Spieser, und Nina von Meiss und Christina Pfander von Mickry3 im Gespräch mit den Kuratorinnen Nadja Baldini, Dimitrina Sevova und Tanja Trampe. Danach Plenumsdiskussion mit dem Publikum. Und Suppe und Bar.
Die Podiumsdiskussion reflektiert kritisch aus den unterschiedlichen Perspektiven der geladenen Künstlerinnen, wie künstlerische Arbeit heute unter Post-Studio-Bedingungen geleistet wird, inwieweit die Präkarität und Präkarisierung, die den jetzigen wirtschaftlichen Bedingungen und den finanziellen Strukturen innewohnen, die innerhalb der Kultursphäre operieren, die Kunstproduktion, das Arbeitsumfeld der Künstlerin und ihre Lebenssituation prägen.
Das Augenmerk liegt auf der Beziehung zwischen Studio, künstlerischer Arbeit, Herstellung von Kunst, ästhetische Praktiken und deren wirtschaftliche Bedingungen. Das Studio mag ein Raum mit einer gewissen Autonomie sein. Die Podiumsdiskussion stellt die Frage, auf welche Weise die Produktivität in der Kunst heute abhängt von der Beziehung zwischen der Freiheit der Künstlerin und den wirtschaftlichen und sozialen Bedingungen der Kunstproduktion. Das Studio ist Teil des produktiven Flusses von Beziehungen, Orten, Architektur, Materialien, Techniken und Infrastruktur. Gleichzeitig ist es in der Grammatik der Autonomie, der Ästhetik und Politik. Es gibt viele mögliche Orte und Nichtorte des Studios, und doch findet es sich in zwei hauptsächlichen Umlaufbahnen, als unabhängiger Raum der Einsamkeit, in dem das Kunstwerk produziert wird, und als offenere Vorstellung des Studios, wo das Kunstwerk von der Arbeitskraft der Künstlerin geleistet wird.
Welches ist die Rolle des Studios im städtischen Gewebe, und wir wird seine Unterstützung geplant? Welches ist die Rolle der selbstorganisierten Studios auf der wirtschaftlichen Landkarte, und wie ist die Herstellung von Kunst im Studio heute organisiert?
Wie wirkt sich Kulturpolitik und staatliche Finanzhilfe für Studio aus und formt die Kunstproduktion, wie auch das Leben und die Existenz der Künstlerin? Selbst unter Post-Studio-Bedingungen markiert der Arbeitsraum der Künstlerin eine Zone der Autonomie, wo sich ein ‚nicht-sanktionierender‘ Kontext von Kunstpraktiken und ‚ungezähmten‘ Beziehungen abspielen können. Wie, kann ebenso gefragt werden, kann Gesellschaftlichkeit als erweitertes oder versprengtes Studio betrachtet werden? Wie kann das Studio kooperative Formen und selbstorganisierte Strukturen innerhalb des städtischen Gefüges und der Kunstpraktiken, künstlerische Arbeit, Herstellung von Kunst herbeiführen und gleichzeitig pulsierende Formen des Lebens organisieren?
Welchen Pfad der kritischen Befragung und welche Art von Methodologie lässt sich in einer Recherche über die (Post-) Studio-Bedingungen anwenden, um Phänomene der Destabilisierung des Studios, der Mobilität und immateriellen Produktion zu reflektieren? Und doch kennzeichnet und signifiziert das Studio nach wie vor einen Raum, in dem künstlerische Arbeit geleistet wird, und die Formen der Organisierung des Arbeitsprozesses der Kunstproduktion. Es bleibt verhältnismässig im Schatten des Privatraums und der Schattenwirtschaft, im Gegensatz zum Museum, zum Kunstraum und der Kunst, die sich im öffentlichen Umfeld abspielt.
Wie können Künstlerinnen ihr Arbeitsumfeld aufrechterhalten, gestützt auf ein Einkommen aus ihrer künstlerischen Arbeit und der Herstellung von Kunst? Oftmals bewohnen sie das Studio lediglich im Zeitraum zwischen mehreren anderen Jobs, während das Studio transformiert und an die Multitasking-Anforderungen projektorientierter Arbeit, Digitalisierung und Internet angepasst wird. Der produktive Prozess ist zwischen zwei Eingaben für Stipendien automatisiert in einer Vielfalt von Kommandos über E-Mail und weitgehend auf Google-Suche abgestützter Recherchearbeit. Künstlerin zu sein ist ein Alltagsjob professioneller Beschäftigung, und gleichzeitig auch eine Form des Lebens, die in eine neue Gesellschaftlichkeit versprengt werden kann. Hito Steyerl beschreibt die instrumentelle Präkarisierung im dritten Stadium der institutionellen Kritik, die lediglich zur „Integration“ der künstlerischen Arbeit sowie der Arbeits- und Lebensbedingungen „in die Präkarität“ führt.“ „Was darin verborgen bleibt – eine neue ‚verborgne Stätte‘ – die praktizierende Künstlerin bleibt ausserhalb der Anstellung.“ Desgleichen ist die Kunstproduktion heutzutage an digitale Produktionsflüsse angeschlossen, automatisiert und hochgradig professionalisiert durch die beschleunigte Konkurrenz im globalen Massstab, welche die Möglichkeiten für kollektive, gemeinschaftliche Formen der Kunst, der Arbeit und des Lebens.
Künstlerinnen streben oft und offen danach, in der Stadt billige und grosse Orte zum Arbeiten zu erschliessen. Der Kampf um freien Raum und mehr Räume in der Stadt, wie in Zürich und anderen Städten in den 1980ern, bringt das Studio dazu, im Widerstand gegen Gentrifizierungsprozesse nachzuhallen, der bisweilen gar in der Besetzung von Gebäuden endete. Wie kann es neue Formen des Widerstands eröffnen, und inwieweit sind Künstlerinnen und kulturelle Arbeiterinnen heute imstande, eine revolutionäre Kraft und politische Subjektivität zu leisten, während sich die das Wesen der Arbeit verändert? Wie können sie in diesem sozialen Wandel zurückfordern und verhandeln? Lacans Aussage „Ich habe Freuds Energetik durch die politische Ökonomie ersetzt“ geht einen Schritt weiter und konfrontiert die Psychoanalyse offen mit der ‚immanenten‘ Kritik der liberalen kapitalistischen Gesellschaft. Psychoanalytischen Praktiken folgend, schliesst das Projekt Part I: Critique de l’économie politique de l’atelier d’artiste eine ‚immanente‘ Kritik der polit-ökonomischen Beziehungen in der Produktion von Kunst ein, um die jetzigen Verhältnisse der künstlerischen Arbeit und Kunst-Herstellung-Leben sozialen Beziehungen in Bezug auf Bewegungen und Vektoren zu reflektieren und zu analysieren.
Welche Auswirkung hat das offene Studio als Form der Aktivierung und Mobilisierung von Publiken und andere Art, Kunst zu organisieren? Wie reflektiert das Format des offenen Studios die jetzige Tendenz des internationalen Kunstaustauschs, von Residenzen angetrieben zu werden? Wie wirkt es sich auf den Produktionsprozess aus (Arbeitsbedingungen und arbeitswirtschaftliche Bedingungen)? Wie stellt das Studio ‚andere‘ experimentelle Formen des Ausstellungsmachen zur Schau, die sich in ihm entfalten können?

Ausgewählte und überarbeitete Auszüge aus dem Text von Dimitrina Sevova für die Ausstellung Theorem 4. Aesthetic Agency and the Practices of Autonomy. Part I: Critique de l’économie politique de l’atelier d'artiste, in Zusammenarbeit mit Alan Roth

Druckfähige Fassung (PDF 98KB)

Diese Podiumsdiskussion ist Teil des Ausstellungsprojekts Theorem 4. Aesthetic Agency and the Practices of Autonomy. Part I: Critique de l’économie politique de l’atelier d’artiste.



[Deutsch oben]

Tonjaschja Adler, Delphine Chapuis Schmitz, Vreni Spieser, and Nina von Meiss and Christina Pfander of Mickry3 in conversation with the curators Nadja Baldini, Dimitrina Sevova and Tanja Trampe. Followed by a plenary discussion with the audience. And soup and bar.
The panel discussion critically reflects from the various perspectives of the invited artists how the artist’s labor is performed today under post studio conditions, to what extent the precarity and precarization inherent in the current economic conditions and the financial structures that operate within the cultural sphere signify the art production, the artist’s working environment and living situation.
The focal point is on the relation between the studio, artists’ labor, art-work, aesthetic practices and their economic conditions. The studio might be a space with a certain degree of autonomy. The panel discussion asks how productivity in art depends today on the relation between the artist’s liberty and the economic and social conditions of art production. The studio is part of the productive flow of relations, subjectivities, institutions, places, architecture, materials, techniques, and infrastructures. At the same time it is in the grammar of autonomy, aesthetics and politics. There are many possible places and non-places of the studio, but it can still be found in two main orbits, as an independent space of solitude where the artwork is produced, and a more open idea of the studio, where the artwork is performed by artist-labor.
What is the role of the studio in the urban fabric and how is its public support planned? What is the role of self-organized studios on the economic map, and how is art-work organized in the studio today?
How do cultural policy and state financial support to the studios impact and shape the production of art, and the lives and existence of the artist, too? Even under post studio conditions, the artist’s working space marks a zone of autonomy, where a ‘non-sanction’ context of art practices and ‘unruly’ relations can take place. At the same time, how can sociality be seen as an expanded or scattered studio? How can the studio induce cooperative forms and self-organized structures within the urban tissue and art practices, art labor, art-work and at the same time organize vibrant forms of life.
What path of critical inquiry and what kind of methodology can be applied in a research about the (post) studio conditions, to reflect on the phenomena of unsettling the studio, mobility, and immaterial production? At the same time, the studio still designates and signifies a space where art labor is performed, and the forms of organization of the working process of the art production. It stays relatively in the shadow of the private space and the hidden economy, unlike the museum, the art space or art taking place in the public environment.
How can artists sustain their working environment relying on income from their artistic labor and art-work? Often, they inhabit the studio mostly for a time in-between several other jobs, while the studio is transformed and adapted to multitasked functions driven by project-oriented work, digitalization and internet. The productive process is automated between two applications for grants, in a diversity of institutional commands by e-mail and research work based largely on Google searches. Being an artist is a day-to-day job of professional occupation, and at the same time a form of life that can scatter into a new sociality. Hito Steyerl describes the instrumental precarization in the third stage of institutional critique that leads merely to “integration into precarity” of artist labor and working and living conditions. “What remains hidden in this – a new ‘hidden abode,’ the practicing artist remains outside of the employment.” At the same time, nowadays the art production process has been connected to digital productive flows, automated and highly professionalized by accelerated competition on a global scale that disempowers the possibilities for collective, community forms of art, work and life.
Artists often and openly strive to gain cheap and large places in the city for working. The struggle for free space and more space in the city, as in Zurich and other cities in the 1980s, makes the studio issue resonate within the resistance against gentrification processes, that has sometimes ended up even in the occupation of buildings. How can it open new forms of resistance, and to what extent are artists and cultural workers today able to perform a revolutionary force and political subjectivity when the nature of work is changing? How can they re-claim and negotiate in these social changes? Lacan’s statement “I replaced Freud’s energetics with political economy” goes one step further and openly engages psychoanalysis with the ‘immanent’ critique of liberal capitalist society. Following psychoanalytic practices, the project Part I: Critique de l’économie politique de l’atelier d’artiste incorporates an ‘immanent’ critique of the politico-economic relations in the production of art to reflect and analyze the current conditions of artist-labor and art-work-life social relations in terms of movements and vectors.
What is the impact of the open studio, as a form of activating and mobilizing audiences and a different way of organizing art? How does the format of the open studio reflect the current tendency of international art exchange to be residency driven? How does it impact the process of production (working conditions and labor economic conditions)? How does the studio dis-play ‘other’ experimental forms of exhibition making that can unfold in the studio?

Selected and reworked excerpts from the text by Dimitrina Sevova for the exhibition Theorem 4. Aesthetic Agency and the Practices of Autonomy. Part 1: Critique de l’économie politique de l’atelier d'artiste, in collaboration with Alan Roth

Printable version (PDF 94KB)

The panel discussion is part of the exhibition project Theorem 4. Aesthetic Agency and the Practices of Autonomy. Part 1: Critique de l’économie politique de l’atelier d'artiste.



Tonjaschja Adler



These aus „ein Essay über die Abstraktionsebene der Kategorie Arbeit“ 2015, Tonjaschja Adler

ARBEIT=KUNST=ARBEIT

Was kann ich unaufgefordert tun?
Wohin nehme ich mein Atelier mit?

Als Künstlerin befinde ich mich auf der „Abstraktionsebene“ der Kategorie Arbeit. Arbeit kann nicht ohne Gesellschaft gedacht werden. Der Begriff der Arbeit wird also von der Gesellschaft in der ich lebe definiert. Heisst das, dass die Schwerpunkte auf die alle wir, die in dieser Gesellschaft leben oder die sich in einer Gruppe dieser Gesellschaft in der man sozialisiert wird und sich befindet, definiert was Arbeit ist ? Worin besteht ihr Wert?
Für fast jede Arbeit gibt es ein Taxierungssystem, auf das man sich mal einigen konnte, aber das durchaus immer wieder zur Diskussion steht. Für die Arbeit der Künstlerin, des Künstlers? Auch.



Delphine Chapuis Schmitz



une terrasse de café, a bookstore a library, the street die Welt, a room of one's own, a place where to be and think freely and do nothing - nothing you have to.
a place where to retreat, the possibility of (if only)
atelier: the whole world, a playground


Vreni Spieser

Why should artists, who are in general earning very little money, pay two rents per month?
It’s kind of ridiculous.

I can’t focus and concentrate in a shared studio, I have to be on my own.
But:
Dialogues or having a counterpart is very important in my working process. It’s contradictory.

I don’t like people saying “Oh, it’s so inspiring to visit you in your studio”.

Since I am working at home, I am kind of isolated.

I am thinking about renting a studio again, but I’m afraid it will cut my flexibility and ability to travel.



Nina von Meiss and Christina Pfander / Mickry3

Mickry 3 was founded in 1998 by Christina Pfander, Dominique Vigne and Nina von Meiss in Zurich, right after they finished their studies in fine arts at F+F School for Art and Media Design.
Their collaboration began with “M3 Supermarkt”. Arranged as an installation with over 1’000 self-made unique objects, the palette ranged from happiness pills to human organs to a female orgasm, all wrapped in cellophane and available at bargain prices. The motto was to produce inexpensive art for everybody while at the same time undermining the functioning of the art business. Somehow this subverting procedure became a slogan of the trio.
Their works often relate to art history and copying, interpreting and re-interpretation is an ever-recurring aspect of their work, which has continued to develop strongly over the years. But what runs through the whole body of work created by Mickry 3 is a sense of humour and a critical but never moralistic attitude towards society.
In 2006 the trio – who works exclusively in the collective – joined the Association of Swiss Sculptors AZB and moved to their conglomerate of workshops and exterior working spaces in the peripheral area of former gasworks in Schlieren. The association, founded in 1983 by a group of sculptors, among which artist Heinz Niederer, settled there in 1984. AZB functions as a self-sustaining association, the protected gasworks area, located on a property of the City of Schlieren, is in possession of the City of Zurich. This overall environment has influenced in many ways the artistic practice of Mickry 3. Beside others, questions towards a “Critique de l’économie politique de l’atelier d’artiste” include to what extent such a structure, setting and environment can influence the artistic and political self-conception. Not least because the area seems to be an ideal place not only to work – but to spend time.

16:30h doors open

17:00h Artist presentation by Maria Pomiansky, followed by discussion between Maria Pomiansky and curator Dimitrina Sevova.

18:00h Spirits Call, a performance by Vadim Levin. Vadim Levin in a dialogue with a dead artist. The name of the artist will be announced later.



This event is part of the exhibition project Theorem 4. Aesthetic Agency and the Practices of Autonomy. Part I: Critique de l’économie politique de l’atelier d'artiste.

A group exhibition with Robert Estermann, Jakob Jakobsen, Lara Jaydha, Jso Maeder, Aya Momose, Saman Anabel Sarabi & Josefine Reisch

curated by Dimitrina Sevova and Alan Roth,
co-curated by Miwa Negoro and Swati Prasad.


Opening: 24 February 2017, 19:00h

Opening Hours / Öffnungszeiten
Wed/Fri 15:00h – 18:00h
Thu 16:00h – 19:00h


Saturday, 25 February 2017, 17:00h (doors open 16:30h)
17:00h Screening and artist talk by Aya Momose, followed by a discussion between Aya Momose, Miwa Negoro and the audience.
Japanese artist Aya Momose will screen Exchange Diary (2015-; 48 min), made in collaboration with Korean artist Im Heung-soon.
19:00h Discussion between the artists Robert Estermann, Jakob Jakobsen, Jso Maeder, Saman Anabel Sarabi & Josefine Reisch and the curators Dimitrina Sevova and Alan Roth.


Thursday, 2 March, 19:00h
Screening of The Judgment, video by Kosta Tonev, and discussion with the artist.


Saturdays, 4 and 11 March, 14:00h
INTERMEZZO (locus solus), in which the audience is invited to a public visit of Jso Maeder's storage to select a few wrapped pieces or parts of installations, based on their wrapped shape, without seeing them. They will then be transported to Corner College for a public mis a nu par un objet.

14.00h: Meet at Bhf. Oerlikon, bus stop 62 direction “Schwamendingerplatz”, or
14.15h: Werkerei Schwamendingen, Luegislandstr. 105, 8051 ZH (Eingang Halle)
17.30h: Corner College (le public mis a nu par un objet)


Sunday, 19 March, 16:00h
Celebrating high times on a Sunday afternoon with a small reading out of the book Josefine, a special high time music set, some tea and gin. high times at Corner College: http://www.hightimepublishers.com


“The machine has to be rediscovered under the sensibility which is no more than a theatrical effect of it.” (Jean-François Lyotard) 1
“Someone must have traduced Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning.” Despite that “K. claims to be innocent and doesn’t even know the Law,” he has been convicted.

The novel Der Prozess by Franz Kafka is appropriated for the title and gives the direction of the second part of the exhibition project Theorem 4. Aesthetic Agency and the Practices of Autonomy. Written between 1914 and 1915, it pulls the reader into a maze of ambiguous biopower entity control by a remote authority, where the nature of the crime is never revealed to either the character Josef K. or the reader. The world is subject to rules and obeys laws – there is order in this world, and knowledge of this world comes by knowledge of its ‘law,’ as Isaac Newton might have said. At the same time, it is haunted by a radical instability. Laws can change. They can be valid for a time but not eternally. The novel remained uncompleted, in a state of ever incompleteness, which turns out to be a concept. Some lines cross over between The Trial and In the Penal Colony, a short story written in October 1914 and published 1919, which describes a sophisticated machine, a device of torture and execution that carves the sentence on the skin of the condemned prisoner before letting him die, all in the course of twelve hours. Kafka, who himself studied law and performed an obligatory year of unpaid service as a law clerk for the civil and criminal courts, was obsessed with the system of justification and the process of justice, of law and aesthetics.

“Baumgarten published his Aesthetica, the first aesthetics, in 1750. Kant would say of this work simply that it was based on an error. Baumgarten confuses judgment, in its determinant usage, when the understanding organizes phenomena according to categories, with judgment in its reflexive usage when, in the form of feeling, it relates to the indeterminate relationship between the faculties of the judging subject.” (Lyotard)

The flashing K-function in the middle is a micro intra-process of reflective actions in a pre-reflexive impersonal consciousness – the real(ity) of virtuality, the power to affect and to be affected, what Deleuze defines to be a theater without a stage. There is no personal inputs by the actors, who do not embody characters, but are only masks behind which there is nothing, just another mask. Their performance of repetitive clothing veils the plane, and is the collective acting of the three avatars Percept, Affect, Concept, which constitute the forces of individuation and the positive estrangement or displacement that clothe the event and transform it.
In Hegel’s negative dialectics, they are Abstract, Negative, Concrete, or Immediate, Mediated, Concrete. In Deleuze, they are transformed into the positive affirmation of No! The immanence evokes the masks and hiding, crime, and the false (the fancy, or funky). The politics of justice, which is not only in the ethical but also in the aesthetic domain, deals with the distribution of force between the layers of violence and control.

The exhibition tests the ‘other’ logic of Labor of negativity (Hegel), which resonates in Karl Marx’s Theories of Surplus Value, in which he constructs the notion of an “other” to “consciousness” or an “other” to “productive” labor as the case may be. The ability of labor to recognize itself in terms of its own otherness, or to ‘create a void in front of themselves.’ (Althusser) Only in the void can solidarity become concrete. There is a striking proximity between the theory of surplus value and the aesthetic sublime, that in the economy of translation comes even closer the politics, aesthetics and economics.

Excerpts from the curatorial text by Dimitrina Sevova, in collaboration with Alan Roth.

We also refer you to the first section of the curatorial text for Part I of this exhibition project, which applies to both chapters.



Robert Estermann

Out of the Fog
2016. Video, HD, 20′35″, looped.



I let the rider ride. I set up a spectacle („I“ not being a less speculative claim than „spectacle“). Everywhere (prism-like), are uncounted drum-like cylinders (to use an image) with reflecting surfaces autonomically revolving around themselves, deflecting the light from all the other cylinders. The wobbling „man with the movie camera“ is just one of these revolving cylinders in this beach-scape. There is no relationship between them – none. Out of the fog is being recorded just after sunrise. Coming out from the cold into the warm, the glasses of the camera are foggy when starting recording. During the video, the fog on the glasses is slowly fading away. Speaking of revolving cylinders, the earlier work Distant Riders consists of a larger-than-life model of a zoetrope, a revolving cylinder with vertical slices on it, one of the first cinematographic devices.

„In this larger-than-life zoetrope, the individual riders merge, so to speak, into a single rider. The landscape in the background of the nine photographs also seems to coalesce into a hyper-landscape. The background does not refer to a concrete geography more closely defined in temporal and spatial terms, but is rather the visual correspondence of a more diffuse kind of “beach-likeness” with a heavily metaphorical element: distance, culturally protected zone, state of emergency. Once again we are dealing not with a literally political discourse - for which read sexually reformist, generally “liberationist” – although it is also possible to discern an atmosphere of this kind in Distant Riders. This atmosphere is produced by the hallucinatory effect of the signifiers of the 1970s which Estermann is quoting here, apparent in the slightly voyeuristic gaze with which the riders enter the field of vision. One consequence of this hallucinatory treatment of signs may be that another context interposes itself over the sexually reformist and generally “liberationist” discourse of the 1970s: the question of the economic, political or even erotic relationship between humans and animals. But how does this theme arise, when it is neither formulated as an ethical programme nor idealised as a mythical unity from the past? As has already been discussed, the slight sexualisation of the motif of the girl rider is too faint to locate the sequence of images in the sphere of the obscene, let alone the perverse. And the atmosphere of the images, with their location in a distant, undefined coastal zone is too restrained to be subjected to a moral discourse. One key may be the landscape. Its significance as a trope may be better understood if we compare it with the function of the scenic refuge zone commonly featured in dystopias: usually this is portrayed as a zone contrasting with the civilised space, which is why it is depicted alternately as an inaccessible desert far from city life, as in Brave New World, as a hidden, protected forest at the end of the last railway line as in Fahrenheit 451, or as a distant coastal zone as in Distant Riders. This counter-world is rich in sensations and full of sensual freshness (in Fahrenheit 451, this is represented by the constant light snowfall in the protected zone of the forest). But as it is freed from the everyday, and its inhabitants are often in a kind of temporally and/or culturally exceptional condition, there is always something unreal – phantasmatic – about the counter-world. This makes its psychological function all the more important: it allows the citizens to experience sensomotoric renewal or even awakening (as opposed to social anaesthesia), psychical continuity (as opposed to schizoid fragmentation), and develop ethical care (as opposed to moral cynicism).“
Excerpt from: Improper Thinking by Daniel Kurjakovic
in: Robert Estermann, Pleasure, Habeas Corpus, Motoricity. The Great Western Possible, ed. Susanne Neubauer, Kunstmuseum Luzern, Museum of Art Lucerne, edition fink, Zurich, 2007, ISBN 978-3-03746-105-1


Scenic Tongical
2015, two artist’s newspapers, concept with Georg Rutishauser, Edition Fink, Zürich.





Jakob Jakobsen

Antiknow Scene 2. The Body Event (Plumbing). On improvisation, unlearning and antiknow
2013-2017. Work-papers from the Antiknow Research Group and one speaker playing unskilled music. From Antiknow. A pedagogical theatre of unlearning and the limits of knowledge. Directed by Jakob Jakobsen.



The installation Antiknow is a collective effort into unlearning and nonknowledge as critical strategies. This, in a time where institutional and frozen forms of knowledge and learning shaped by economic forces increasingly characterise education and society in general. The term ‘Antiknow’ was originally introduced by John Latham as his course title for the Antiuniversity of London in 1968. It is doubtful whether this course ever took place.

During his six-month residency at Flat Time House, starting in April 2013, visual artist Jakob Jakobsen engaged in elaborating possible meanings and consequences of the term Antiknow in the current context of so-called knowledge economy. Jakobsen set up the Antiknow Research Group, involving young artists from FTHo’s MFI Graduate Group as well as a number of artists, writers and therapists with whom Jakob has collaborated for many years. This led to a series of meetings focusing on Antiknow in relation to work, politics, art and resistance. Marina Vishmidt, Maria Berrios, Howard Slater and John Cunningham were invited to reflect on specific themes within these fields of social practice. Also involved in the group were John Hill, Mary Vettise, Henrik Heinonen, Claire Louise Staunton, Katriona Beales, Mohammad Namazi, Danny Hayward, amongst other incidental participants.



This installation is one of the consequences of Antiknow and involves experiments into drama for non-actors, unskilled music and free drawing. The installation refers to FTHo as a ready-made stage, using as a point of departure the anthropomorphic scheme that John Latham proposed for the building, where each room is dedicated to a specific part of the body: The Mind, The Brain, The Body Event (Plumbing), and the Hand. In the space, a mechanical theatre was developed. The various themes investigated by the Antiknow Research Group are presented as a drama (or anti-drama) between sets of loudspeakers and synchronised lighting. The scripts have been produced collectively using transcriptions of the Antiknow Research Group meetings. The improvised/unskilled music is produced together with Paul Abbott and Gabriel Humberstone.



Lara Jaydha

Broken and open
2017. Moving Image | A series of digital collages (work in progress)



We reach out for a real connection to stay afloat in a sea of submerged emotions. From a deep sense of longing for connection, comes the desire to open and share parts of ourselves. We allow ourselves to be vulnerable and in doing so realize the fragility of our existence. There is an attempt to hold on to the present but everything keeps slipping away. Endings are often unresolved.

This existential truth is terrifying but at the same time, I find there is a sense of beauty and calm in it. I am interested in exploring how we perceive the idea of fragility and its association with gender, form and stereotypes. Why is it looked at a sign of weakness? How can we change this notion? Can we look at it without judgment? Could it symbolize a source of inner strength?



Jso Maeder

INTERMEZZO (locus solus)
2017. Two visits to the artist's storage, on 4 and 11 March 2017. Public mis a nu par un objet.


B°N-BATTERIE
2017. Video installation.



B°N-BATTERIE. amuse-um/TRICKSTER’S TANK

„We are getting rid of ownership“ - John Cage, „Silence“

The trickster, showing up like sort of keeper of the gap as far as he widens out a line normally/normatively marking a dualities’ explicit distinction/discrimination, that appearingly determines and legitimises a difference between two positions like also hierarchic classification (true/contingent, active/passive, dominant/submitted to etc.), to a proper area in between (thus: a gap), compromising/corrupting these positions and so far the ‚system’ of segregations establishing them as obligatory rules valid by its law/language.

Therefore, like a dissimilation by not correctly choosing a position but taking the gap, the trickster breaks the dialectic matrix of a historiography basically reflecting differences as functions of volition and, by consequence, a notion of rationalism of decision making character, whose logics always justify that some corpus has/is to rule: a fix scheme of continiouity or change in an antagonistic scenario, succession or revolving replacement regarding dominant positions as given by an abstract order within rulers/winners and victims/loosers (reproduced in terms of ‚culture & science‘ by modern disciplinarity in theory like economics as a referential construction of social efficiency). So an agent provocateur, if on purpose or not, disobidient and without respect in a way of not reaching any given part in such dispositions, one hardly can localise the trickster’s ambitions or motivations.

Like an analog concept of dis-sense and an incongruousness under that aspect of being regardless of culturally prevalent principles/the institution’s régimentality, his trouble making behaviour/inter-actement is morelike similar to a setting/display like the one of bricolage’s (a way of disobidience in/through matters of knowledge in comparison to the ingenieur/professional standards): what is brought together/assembled and taking place in a combination, is not functionally predefined by controlling instances nor can consequently become conclusion of this kind - there’s more the occasion/opportunity than a goal in the bricoleurs parapractice, a non-repetitve making of also temporally, not a stepwise efficient development from a to b, or a specific sense that predetermines logically the actions, which also and finally means that they remain conflicting as they cannot automatically be assumed as useful being connected with an intentionally positive assertion.

Text: Jso Maeder



Aya Momose

Lesson (Japanese)
2015. Video, HD, 7′16″, looped.



Employing theatrical techniques, Momose often depicts situations in which voices and bodies diverge, or departures from stated intentions, to generate new shades of meaning. In this work, in the bottom of the screen, there is a Japanese written with a roman character / pronunciation and English translation distorted as an “(fictional) Educational Video for Japanese Language Learners”. The sign language is false after all, the definition and the context which the gesture and the voice (sound) sends becomes separated eventually. The separation is suddenly broad between the expression on her face and the voice, and the parole subjective becomes ambiguity / multiple. Here, there’s a fight for ethnicity and the language, between the sorrow and the grievously of the oppressed / enforced, and the cruelty and deception by the oppressing / enforcing. Beyond its non-expression mask, there’s an alternation theater made by their change of the voice’s intonation.


To Cuddle a Goat, a Poor Grammar Exercise
2016. Single channel video, HD, 13′50″.



Distinguished by its adroit ability to overturn the link between voice and body, Momose’s works have dealt with misunderstandings and discrepancies associated with communication, and reversals in the relationship. In the recent work, To Cuddle a Goat, a Poor Grammar Exercise, which includes scenes filmed in Mongolia, she explores different approach to the previous, and expresses the ambiguous nature of its subjects and the uncertainty of relationships with others. The work implies the oppressed subjects and bodies in the history beyond any boundaries.



Saman Anabel Sarabi & Josefine Reisch

How to sing in the midst of the capitalization of art: the desirable table of Josefine. An orientation device
2017. Installation, table, cloth.



Saman Anabel Sarabi and Josefine Reisch have drafted their own orientation device to orient themselves through the cliffs and institutions, waters and archives, mountains and walls, cities and channels, forests and schools, - finally through the horizontalities and flatnesses of 2017. Extending, stretching and flipping the semi-autobiographical short story of Franz Kafka titled Josefine die Sängerin oder das Volk der Mäuse they use their rather specific orientation device to articulate questions on the autonomy of art in our time within which the capitalization of art has been already fully articulated. Through the perspective and voice of Josefine and with the help of her device they will put urgent questions on the table in the near future, starting at Corner College on 24 February 2017.

Doors open 16:30h

17:00h Screening and artist talk by Aya Momose, followed by a discussion between Aya Momose, co-curator Miwa Negoro and the audience.
Japanese artist Aya Momose will screen Exchange Diary (2015-; 48 min), made in collaboration with Korean artist Im Heung-soon.

19:00h Discussion between the artists Robert Estermann, Jakob Jakobsen, Jso Maeder, Saman Anabel Sarabi & Josefine Reisch and the curators Dimitrina Sevova and Alan Roth.

This event is part of the exhibition project Theorem 4. Aesthetic Agency and the Practices of Autonomy. Part II: Der Prozess / The Trial.


Aya Momose

Exchange Diary
2015-. Video, HD, 48′09″. In collaboration with Im Heung-soon.

Taking the form of a visual diary, Exchange Diary is a collection of short films recorded and exchanged by two artists over a year, using a unique way in which each artist filmed a short video and sent it to their collaborator who then added their own narration based on their impressions of the visual images. This work incorporates each artist’s personal interpretation of the images combining the differences and similarities of their cultural, social and political values.

Initially, each artist shot a short video of their everyday lives or a place they had visited, and then sent the video to their collaborator. The other artist then watched the video, and added their own narration based on their impressions of the visual images. This artwork incorporates each artist’s personal interpretation of the images combining the differences and similarities of their cultural, social and political values.

Following the screening, Momose will introduce her artistic practices dealing with the issue related to one’s body and voice, including Lesson (Japanese).