Wind Tunnel Festival

The Windtunnel Festival is an annual event that invites artists, curators, scientists, and the audience to exchange ideas and connect with one another. Through open encounters and dialogues in the wind tunnel, on the threshold between indoors and outdoors, we spend time together in search of new insights and moments of connection.


Wind Tunnel Festival 2025: Do You Believe in Social Energy?

Friday, 23 May 2025, 4โ€“9 pm
Saturday, 24 May 2025, 4โ€“9 pm


Do you hear the wind? Who hears the wind? How can we recognize a social breeze? Social energy never hurtsโ€ฆ Or is it perhaps too exhausting? Weโ€™re searching for resonances and social energies that set us in motion, foster dialogue, and have the potential to transform us.

In May 23 and 24, 2025, the Wind Tunnel invites artists, scientists, and the public to come together and exchange ideas. Through open rehearsals, weโ€™ll spend time with one another, exploring new insights and moments of connection.

We will approach the wind through sound, film, literature, and music, with contributions by Filipa Cรฉsar, Vaari Claffey, Lizeth Cordoba Adarme & Manuel Yawar Muyuy & Marine Gigandet, Florian Dombois, Julika Gittner, Natis, Helene Romakin, Chemi Rosado Seijo, Todd Sekuler, Elisa Silva, and U5.

The Wind Tunnel Festival is presented by ~tilde.

@tilde_operator
@der_windtunnel

We wish we had a wind tunnel.

* This theme is strongly inspired by Hartmut Rosa's current research on social energy, and on resonance published in his 2019 book Resonance: A Sociology of Our Relationship to the World.


Wind Tunnel Festival 2024: Swirling Winds Won't Center

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. In the third edition of the Wind Tunnel Festival, we look for winds that leave the streamlines and swirl in different directions. For our winds whisper the vast number of multiple stories swirling off the grid.

Together with all participants, we follow the multiple flows to create narratives through imaginative space-making and transdisciplinary co-learning. The Wind Tunnel is a walk-in sculpture with its ecosystem meant for convening wind and people to share practices and challenges.

On May 24โ€“25, 2024, 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 Debasish Bipul Borah, Lizeth Cordoba Adarme & Manuel Yawar Muyuy, Florian Dombois, Samia Henni, KUฤ†ฤ†A, Madafi Pierre, Raqs Media Collective, Helene Romakin, Jรถrg Scheller, Dubravka Sekuliฤ‡, U5

The Wind Tunnel Festival is cared for by ~tilde.

@tilde_operator
@der_windtunnel


Wind Tunnel Festival 2023: Between Parafiction and Parascience

There is a wind tunnel on the roof of the art school in Zurich. It is an open space that provides a gentle airstream โ€“molding the invisibleโ€“ 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 23โ€“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.


Wind Tunnel Festival 2022

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 interpretationโ€“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 29โ€“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 trรกch nhiแป‡m (Quyngh Dong & Luca Klett), Mika Elo, Andy Graydon, Ravit Helled, Kabelo Malatsie, Tom McCarthy, Ari Benjamin Meyers, Christof Nรผssli, Christoph Oeschger, Helene Romakin, Luise Schrรถder, Leslie Thornton, Irene Vรถgeli, and U5.
 

The Wind Tunnel Festival is cared for by ~tilde.

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Wind Tunnel Festival