Shared Projects

Shared Projects

Unsettling the setting. Playing, Plying, Squatting // Operating, Owning, Occupying ––– or rather?

curated by Mirjam Bayerdörfer and Dorothee Richter

24.10.–23.11.2014
Gasthaus zum Baeren/ Museum Baerengasse Zurich

Alain Jenzer, Allan Siegel, Alex Meszmer and Reto Müller, André Bideau, Byung Chul Kim, Brigitte Dätwyler, Dimitrina Sevova, Emilie Guenat, Florence Jung, Johanna Bruckner, Karen Geyer, Lena Lieselotte Schuster, Lucie Kolb and Gabriel Flückiger, Mariann Oppliger and Sophie Hofer, Matthias Megyeri, Michael Hiltbrunner, Riikka Tauriainen, Romy Rüegger, Szuper Gallery, Tom Menzi and Stefan Wagner, Triin Tamm

Ideas, strategies, suggestions, concepts for an (im)possible / (un)bearable exhibition situation

Around the Paradeplatz in Zurich, money does not grow on trees but instead is buried in the ground. What for? What does it do there? The Museum Bärengasse is located 200m away from Paradeplatz. For whom? What does it do there?

21 artists present proposals and conceptual sketches concerned with the question of how to deal with the Museum Bärengasse (currently: Gasthaus zum Bären). The exhibited concepts react in a sketch-like way to the situation – the building itself; it’s usage and its surroundings. The proposals range from concrete to absurd, from hypothetical to practical reasoning. The concepts draw on different media conglomerates and logics. For one month, the exhibition is holding onto the question (‘raising the question’ or ‘asking’: How can we make sense of this place?

What does it mean to work and/ or live within heart of the financial district? Where and in what kinds of formats does art happen in this area? How is art contributing to the social structures of this part of the city? What does it mean to run an exhibition space in this area without any budget? How could one use art to re-read a heritage-protected museum building located in the middle of the financial district? The questions are not limited to the literal context of Bärengasse and the city of Zurich. They rather deal with the fundamental conditions of work, art, money, capital, city and space.

Further dates:: Friday, October 24, 8 p.m.: Roberto Nigro “Alienation, Social Individual, and Communism. Marx in the 21st Century” (lecture in English)

Saturday, November 1, 2 p.m.: Open questions, Part 1 (round-table discussion)
Thursday, November 6, 6 p.m.: Open questions, Part 2 (round-table discussion and shared food)
Thursday, November 13, 6 p.m.: Open questions, Part 3 (round-table discussion and shared food)
Saturday, November 22, 3 p.m.: “Heimlich” by Daniel Marti (an intervention) **
Saturday, November 23, 3 p.m.: Finissage

** “Heimlich” is an intervention by Daniel Marti, who is concerned with the Museum Bärengasse’s public urban space. The intervention ends in the form of a performative discussion between Daniel (the artist), Dimitrina (the invited curator), and the audience. “Heimlich” is part of the curatorial proposal “On the return of the uncanny” by Dimitrina Sevova.