Crossfades. Reconstructing the Future
9 October – 23 December 2010
Shedhalle Zurich
Seestrasse 395/Postfach 771
8038 Zürich
Switzerland
T +41 44 481 59 50
F +41 44 481 59 51
Opening Hours:
Tue – Fr 1-6 pm, Sa-Su 12 am – 6 pm
www.shedhalle.ch
Curators: Anke Hoffmann and Yvonne Volkart, Shedhalle
Lately, history and the past have become topics in art to an ever greater extent. In contrast to the science of history, art not only places special emphasis on the questions of memory and retrospection and the investigation of new narratives. It also explores the very processes that turn some event into “history” and investigates how and by which means certain narrations and views of history become prevalent as opposed to others. With newly revived self-confidence, art considers itself part of the historical discourse and as one form of historiography.
Art has become an area and an agent re-actualising history and trying out subjective forms of historiography. We perceive art, and in particular politically engaged art, as extraordinarily apt, ideally suited for this new approach in historiography since art always has been a field developing aesthetical procedures and strategies in opposition to the prevailing culture and its potential predomination. This seems especially important in present times, since historical knowledge is no longer solely generated by textbooks and patriarchal teachers but increasingly by Hollywood block busters or social platforms in the internet, times that, furthermore, confront us not with a lack but a superabundance of information.
Contemporary art, the digital art media, and documentary-experimental film have developed diverse approaches setting the gaps and losses that are necessarily involved in history, too, against the spectacle and the accumulation. Numerous projects seek for appropriate contemporary forms of tradition and the representation of times past and in doing so, at the same time, exceed the concepts of history used in science or historiography, the mass media and digital memories.
The title “Cross-fades” refers to an artistic strategy which we would like to put emphasis on. It means that we, today, put the past into a perspective that may possibly lead to a “film” of the future. The interest in history, thus, not only leads to new approaches to the past in order to judge it differently, but also to new concepts of agency for the future, to new possibilities for the audience “to inscribe” themselves.
Film Screening and Artist Talk with Sarah Vanagt: Friday, 12 November, 7 – 9 pm
The artist and filmmaker Sarah Vanagt from Brussels is a (hi)story-teller. Her films reflect the colonial history of Belgium in Central Africa, history lessons in Ruanda and tell world history from a perspective of immigrants.
Cross-Talk “Art, Science, History”: Saturday, 13 November, 4 – 8.30 pm
with the historian Beat Näf (University Zurich), the art theorist Ute Vorkoeper (Hamburg), the curators Raffael Döring and Katharina Dunst (shift-Festival, Basel), the Shedhalle-curators Anke Hoffmann and Yvonne Volkart and the artist Suzanne Treister (London), Christoph Draeger (New York), Sarah Vanagt (Brussels) and Miriam Visaczki (Weimar)
For further information and press material please contact:
Angela Wittwer, assistant curator: aw@shedhalle, ++41/44 481 59 50.
Programme Support:
Präsidialdepartment der Stadt Zürich, BAK, Migros Kulturproduzent,
Cassinelli Vogel Stiftung, Zürcher Kantonalbank, Ernst-Göhner-Stiftung
