Wind Tunnel Festival

There is a wind tunnel on the roof of the art school in Zurich. It is an open space that provides a gentle airstream –molding the invisible– and undermines modernist techno-positive backgrounds. In the second edition of the Wind Tunnel Festival, we ask: What are the realities we live in? Whose realities do we perceive? We explore the various make-believes between parafiction (a concept established by Carrie Lambert-Beatty) and parascience, crisscrossing fiction and fact, nurturing relational thinking, and seeking nondualist approaches.

The Wind Tunnel Festival shifts attention and resists the binarisms of objective knowledge versus sensual, emotional, and spiritual experiences. It questions their supposition and history while tracing their blind spots. We sway with one foot in parascience and need many feet on the ground. Together with all participants, we follow the multiple flows to create new narratives through imaginative space-making and transdisciplinary co-learning. This is concerned with engaging the body in activities of making and discussing, in which simultaneities between embodied knowledges and critical practices could inspire lasting exchanges. The Wind Tunnel is a walk-in sculpture with its ecosystem meant for convening wind and people, conducting flows of air and thought, to share practices and challenges.

On June 23–24, 2023, the Wind Tunnel invites artists, scientists, and the audience for exchange and encounters. In open rehearsals, we spend time together and search for new insights and moments of connection.

We will approach the wind through sound, film, literature, and music, and talk to it through dreaming practice with contributions by Wren Cellier, Florian Dombois, Sher Doruff, Giulia Essyad, Zainabu Jallo, Philipp Modersohn, Isabel Nolan, Lucas Odahara, Christoph Oeschger, Belinda Quirke, Helene Romakin, U5, Vivian Wang.

We wish we had a wind tunnel.
 

The Wind Tunnel Festival is cared for by ~tilde.

There is a wind tunnel on the roof of the art school in Zurich. It is an open space that provides a gentle airstream, molds the invisible, and undermines modernist techno-positive backgrounds. The wind tunnel is a walk-in sculpture with its own ecosystem. Depending on the affiliations and care in place and moment, it changes its rhythm. Wind tunnels have fundamentally changed contemporary art and design for a hundred years, and they continue to foster many layers of interpretation–especially when you slow down their engine. Combined with light and smoke, it becomes an infinite metaphor machine challenging expectations, thoughts, and attitudes.

On April 29–30, 2022, the Wind Tunnel invites artists, scientists, and the audience for exchange and encounters. In open rehearsals, we spend time together, searching for new insights and moments of connection, with only sun and moon above us.

We will approach the wind through sound, film, literature, and music and talk to it through curatorial practice and planetary science with contributions by Andreas Bunte, Florian Dombois, DJ trách nhiệm (Quyngh Dong & Luca Klett), Mika Elo, Andy Graydon, Ravit Helled, Kabelo Malatsie, Tom McCarthy, Ari Benjamin Meyers, Christof Nüssli, Christoph Oeschger, Helene Romakin, Luise Schröder, Leslie Thornton, Irene Vögeli, and U5.
 

The Wind Tunnel Festival is cared for by ~tilde.