June 3–August 7, 2022
If all of life is centered around work—how about work being a bit more like life, or like, living?
Protozone7 at Shedhalle Zürich is dedicated to the realm of non-work, creating zones for invisible processes that take place when we rest, laugh, love and non-work. Such zones have become an endangered species. Their ecologies thrive on abundance and generosity. They don’t want anything from you in return—not even your sophistically understanding nods. Such places are there as themselves, full yet never complete, meshworks of possibilities that allow for stillness, pause, rest. Time is a scarcity yet mysteriously enough, there is more than enough of it here.
The artistic practices assembled deal with the often painful yet still romanticized blurring of life and work. Over the last two years, questions around the infrastructures of life and work have been resurfacing more frequently. While modes of production such as the “home office” are being widely introduced, notions like “playbour” promise a merging of labour, play and leisure into one single activity. Not only is this promise only meant for a few, it also often leads to extensive personal exhaustion. And while playbour is built around work places of so-called “immaterial labour,” it is tightly interwoven with the material extraction and exploitation of both workers and more-than-human resources on a global scale.
The walls of Shedhalle are reminiscent of its past as a production site for mechanical silk weaving in the late 19th century, when manual labour within textile fabrication moved from workers individual homes to industrial complexes. Protozone7 takes these moments and shifts in time as a horizon to reconsider old questions such as: How to buffer lives and living from total abstraction and financialization?
The artists invited developed their work within the pandemic. As many of us, they went through moments of crisis, depression, illness, loss, deprivation. They found ways to foster kinships and ecologies where the processes of the works presented came into being. This zone hosts their specific and often slow practices, their ongoing engagements and meticulous care towards materials.
With aLifveForms (fed and cared for by JP Raether), Claudia Hill, Kiraṇ Kumār, Nils Amadeus Lange, Liquid Dependencies Theory, Enad Marouf, River Oracle, SABA
Curated by: Lucie Tuma
Curatorial assistance: Sophie Germanier, Ekin Ani Özdemir
Hi-Intensity Phase program on the opening weekend June 3–6, 2022 includes Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis (BWV 21) a performance by Nils Amadeus Lange & guests, Liquid Dependencies: what does a decentralized caring society look like? a durational game by Liquid Dependencies Theory, a concert by music duo GLENN, artist’s talks with Enad Marouf and SABA, a workshop with Kiraṇ Kumār and an activation of Claudia Hill’s installation work Co-Weaving through several weaving sessions with various local groups. Furthermore, the weekend hosts special guests such as the philosopher Bojana Kunst, listening sessions with Nina & Tina, DJ Rakita and Tyra Wigg’s performance The hand, the rock, your shoulder, and my mouth. See website for a more detailed program.
Acknowledgments
Supported by the City of Zurich and IFA Exhibition Funding
Thank you DOGO Residenz für Neue Kunst for supporting our artist-in-residence program and hosting SABA (Silvia Amancei & Boghdan Armanu) during their production process for wish we were free (2022)
Graphic design: Studio Yukiko
