Master Project

Irene Grillo, Maren Brauner

kunstpassanten


1 October 2009–1 October 2010
City of Zurich, collaboration with the Fabriktheater Rote Fabrik and the Institute for Contemporary Art of the Zurich University of the Arts

Marina Belobrovaja, !Mediengruppe Bitnik, Karin Frei Bernasconi with Victorine Müller, eggerschlatter, Dominik Gross, Laura Kalauz with Diana Rojas-Feile, San Keller, Daniel Knorr, Knowbotik Research, Kunsthaus Aussersihl, stadt.labor, Stefan Wagner

How do artists, theoreticians, and inhabitants of Zurich experience the public space of the city? How do they tell about this experience? Which role does art play in their stories? Which image of public space do they constitute?

kunstpassanten is a curatorial and educational project by Maren Brauner und Irene Grillo. Its concept was developed during the MAS Curating and its realisation started in October 2009 in collaboration with the Fabriktheater Rote Fabrik and the Institute for Contemporary Art of the Zurich University of the Arts. On the one hand the project aims to raise questions about the definition and the processes of the development of public spaces – considered not in their physical and quantitative meaning, but more in an acting and qualitative sense; on the other hand it intends to examine the function and the possibilities of art in improving these processes using the investigative format of the walk.

For kunstpassanten we invite artists, theoreticians and curators to design in a very open and individual way public walks during which they propose their own considerations or questions on public space and public art. Each walk is conceptually developed in close collaboration with the invited artist and/or theoretician or curator and takes place only once in the urban space. After this single public “performance” a virtual documentation of the walk is developed in collaboration with the involved persons and published in the archive of the project’s website. Users of the page can download the documentation of the walks and realise them on their own initiative: www.kunstpassanten.ch.

The form of the documentation is not exactly a one-to-one reproduction of the real walk, but has to be understood as an exhibition form by itself. It intends to use the public space as exhibition space and the documentation of a past event as educational instrument in improving the perception of the city. Instead of visiting a gallery or a museum inhabitants of the city have the possibility to stroll through the city guided by a foreign glance. Can this kind of approach stimulate a critical moment in the perception of the public space of the city?

Contact: ire.grillo@gmail.com

The project is supported by:
Georges und Jenny Bloch Stiftung, Fabriktheater Rote Fabrik, Institute for Contemporary Art of the Zurich University of the Arts, Migros-Kulturprozent, Ernst Göhner Stiftung, Stadt Zürich.