IFCAR Publication Series

Maschinen unter Druck

Kris Decker (eds.), Maschinen unter Druck, Vexer Verlag, St.Gallen, 2022

"They bend over the machine, apply and wipe, move from the table where the colours are mixed to the prints spread out on the floor, consult about the 'Cadillac blue' (Stauch), separate again, modify the composition of the paint, negotiate the products from the next run, which are provisionally hung on a wall, and make pragmatic, aesthetic, conceptual, craft decisions. In the course of a day in the workshop, some things are courant normal, but it can happen that things don't work out, get stuck, are repeated and reconsidered and done all over again. Occasionally the machine sparks in, a tool doesn't do what it's supposed to, or a material insists on its waywardness.

Several sheets of paper passed through the machine that day. What emerges is by no means a product of chance, but neither is it entirely plannable or predictable. The elements that shape this process are interwoven in many ways, including the preliminary work from Stauch's studio, the rollers of the machine, the stone with its special material properties, the etching agent, the artist's ideas, the experiences of the printer, the history of their collaboration, the art history of lithography, the workshop rituals. And, not to be forgotten: the ink pots that Wolfensberger opens and takes from them those substances for whose properties he has developed a special attention in the course of his decades of work - substances that are capable of surprises as soon as they come into contact with the paper inside the machine. Even if there is routine and experience: In principle, Wolfensberger says, no two printing passes are the same."

German
136 pages
Format: 11.4 x 16.8 cm
ISBN 978-3-907112-59-5
CHF 25

→ Deutsche Printversion
→ Englische Open Access Version / DOI

Untooling

Ines Kleesattel, knowbotiq (Christian Hübler, Yvonne Wilhelm) and Uriel Orlow (Ed.)

Untooling is a speculative and open-ended set of questions and reflections that emerged out of an engagement with the conditions and processes of translocal artistic research.

Working on projects in different contexts, sensitive environments and assemblies we tried to trace, activate and negotiate translocal entanglements, our own positionalities and some of the constellations and pitfalls we encountered. The resulting set of questions has no particular order and does not propose any solutions. Instead the questions advocate slowing down, taking time, and allowing situations to become more complex, in turn encouraging us to become more responsive and responsible as researchers, artists, and fellow beings.

Card set consisting of 56 cards, supplement sheet and folding box

Published as part of the research project Aesthetics of Translocality,  funded by the SNSF.

Zurich 2021

Volume 27 of the Institute for Contemporary Art Research (IFCAR) series,  Zurich University of the Arts

Trading Zones

Camera Work in Artistic and Ethnographic Research

Barbara Preisig, Laura von Niederhäusern and Jürgen Krusche (Ed.)

This book introduces camera-based practices at the intersections of artistic and ethnographic research that critically examine the means of their own production and social embeddedness. In shared practices such as recording in the field, editing in post-production and modes of presentation, the camera is involved as an agent rather than an innocent device. How does the camera grapple with the invisible and how does it reveal what the camerawoman is unable to see? How do films, videos and photographs provide access to vulnerable knowledges and what presentation formats can extend the linearity of narration?

Taking account of their own situatedness and the limits of representation, many of this book’s contributors attempt to speak with — rather than about — the other. These negotiations appearing in the featured projects open up a shared field of artistic and ethnographic inquiry, whose potential — for experiments and reflections — is far from exhausted.

Contributions by Sepideh Abtahi, Shirin Barghnavard, Laura Coppens, Louis Henderson, Heidrun Holzfeind, Mina Keshavarz, Daniel Kötter, Jürgen Krusche, Bärbel Küster, Bina Elisabeth Mohn, Laura von Niederhäusern, Uriel Orlow, Barbara Preisig, Rani al Raji, Nahid Rezaei, Anette Rose, Sahar Salahshoori, Christoph Schenker, Amira Solh, Lena Maria Thüring, and Zheng Mahler

Open Access / DOI

Volume 26 of the publication series of the Institute for Contemporary Art Research, Zurich University of the Arts

The fragmented City

Processes and Strategies of Exclusion and their Effects on Public Spaces

Jürgen Krusche, Aya Domenig, Thomas Schärer and Julia Weber (Ed.), JOVIS Verlag, Berlin 2021

[Translate to English:] Fragmentierte Stadt

Wherever people live closely together, there is competition and displacement. We practically take it for granted that many public places cannot be used equally by different groups of people. This assumption goes almost unnoticed, and is counter to the ideals of a democratic, open society with equal rights for all its members. How do people who exist at the margins of society (or see themselves as existing there) experience public urban spaces? Where do they feel welcome, and where do they feel unwanted? Where, how, and why do use conflicts arise? The project Die fragmentierte Stadt—the fragmented city—pursues answers to these questions. A collection of observations, walks, and encounters that took place over the course of three years in Berlin, Graz, and Zurich form the foundation of four artistic ethnographic approaches to experiences of exclusion and appropriation strategies. Photographic, audio-visual, performance, and verbal investigations led to the development of the ideas, insights, and products introduced by the texts, images, and videos in this volume.

German
192 Pages
Format: 17 x 24 cm
ISBN 978-3-86859-643-4
EUR 35.00

Open Access / DOI

Volume 25 of the publication series of the Institute for Contemporary Art Research, Zurich University of the Arts

Aesthetics of the Commons

Shusha Niederberger, Cornelia Sollfrank und Felix Stalder (Hrsg.), Zürich 2021

What do a feminist server, an art space located in a public park in North London, a ‘pirate’ library of high cultural value yet dubious legal status, and an art school that emphasizes collectivity have in common? They all demonstrate that art can play an important role in imagining and producing a real quite different from what is currently hegemonic; that art has the possibility to not only envision or proclaim ideas in theory, but also to realize them materially.

Aesthetics of the Commons examines a series of artistic and cultural projects—drawn from what can loosely be called the (post)digital—that take up this challenge in different ways. What unites them, however, is that they all have a ‘double character.’ They are art in the sense that they place themselves in relation to (Western) cultural and art systems, developing discursive and aesthetic positions, but, at the same time, they are ‘operational’ in that they create recursive environments and freely available resources whose uses exceed these systems. The first aspect raises questions about the kind of aesthetics that are being embodied, the second creates a relation to the larger concept of the ‘commons.’ In Aesthetics of the Commons, the commons are understood not as a fixed set of principles that need to be adhered to in order to fit a definition, but instead as a ‘thinking tool’—in other words, the book’s interest lies in what can be made visible by applying the framework of the commons as a heuristic device.

English
276 Pages
Format: 0,7 x 21.1 cm
ISBN 978-3035803457
EUR 25.00

Volume 24 of the publication series of the Institute for Contemporary Art Research, Zurich University of the Arts

Swiss Psychotropic Gold

Knowbotiq und Nina Bandi (Ed.), Basel 2020

Up to 70% of gold which is traded worldwide passes through Swiss refineries. However, this happens largely unseen and unnoticed by a wider public. Not only that, it is a centuries-long history of Swiss commodity trade being caught up in colonial, and later postcolonial entanglements which remains largely obscured by public debate. The Swiss mythology of neutrality transforms the often violent and “dirty” material complexities of mining and trading into an opaque and orderly form of technocracy, discretion and virtual finance. At the same time, by being instrumental for early modern industrialization as well as contemporary finance, Swiss trading activities have influenced vivid cultural, affective and moral economies. They have contributed to Swiss wealth, but also to national narratives of independence, safety and white supremacy. In this hybrid media publication gold together with its entanglements and metabolisms serves as starting point in order to track down the elusive and often invisible paths of molecules, affects and violence. Alongside knowbotiq’s artistic practice emanating from the project ‘Swiss Psychotropic Gold’ (2016-17) and contributions by collaborators, it presents contributions focusing on struggles around illegal gold mining, racialized processes of extraction, deep sea mining and raw material politics alchemic trading of gold, , the social history of the molecule, molecular strikes, golden amnesia and psychotropic refineries.

Website
www.swisspsygold.knowbotiq.net

Englisch
270 pages
SD card with artistic contribitions (videos, audio)
Format: 14,5 x 21 cm
ISBN 978-3-8561-6921-3
EUR 25.00

Open Access / DOI

Volume 23 of the publication series of the Institute for Contemporary Art Research, Zurich University of the Arts

Natures of Data

A Discussion between Biology, History and Philosophy of Science and Art

Christoph Hoffmann, Hannes Rickli, Philipp Fischer, Hans Hofmann, Gabriele Gramelsberger und Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, Diaphanes (Ed.), Zurich 2020

Computer-based technologies for the production and analysis of data have been an integral part of biological research since the 1990s at the latest. This not only applies to genomics and its offshoots but also to less conspicuous subsections such as ecology. But little consideration has been given to how this has changed research practically. How and when do data become questionable? To what extent does the necessary infrastructure influence the research process? What status is given to software and algorithms in the production and analysis of data?

These questions were discussed for two days in September 2016 by the biologists Philipp Fischer und Hans Hofmann, the philosopher Gabriele Gramelsberger, the historian of science and biology Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, the science theorist Christoph Hoffmann, and the artist Hannes Rickli. The conditions of experimentation in the digital sphere are examined in four chapters—“Data,” “Software,” “Infrastructure,” and “in silico”—in which the different perspectives of the discussion partners complement one another. The aim is not to confirm one’s own point of view, but through reciprocal interchange to gain a deepened understanding of the contemporary basis of biological research.

English
168 pages
Format: 13,4 x 21,1 cm
ISBN 978-3-0358-0225-2
CHF 36.90

Open Access / DOI English

Open Access / DOI German

Volume 22 of the publication series of the Institute for Contemporary Art Research, Zurich University of the Arts

Deep Water

Public Spaces in Sham Shui Po, Hong Kong

Jürgen Krusche, Siu King Chung (Ed.), Hong Kong 2017

In strongly globalized cities there are fast transformation processes on the move, reinforced by the neo-liberal policies and the resulting economic, social, urban and cultural policy strategies. From a research perspective, a main question is how to capture, describe and interpret such developments taking place at a fast pace.
Researchers and artists from Hong Kong and Zurich worked together in a small area of Sham Shui Po, one of the poorest and still most traditional Districts of Hong Kong, to investigate its public spaces according to topics of urban transformation and gentrification.

Website
www.shamshuipo-deepwater.com

English
180 pages
Format: 16.5 x 24 cm
US$33.50 (online purchase)
ISBN 978-988-77238-5-1

Volume 17 of the publication series of the Institute for Contemporary Art Research, Zurich University of the Arts

Die ambivalente Stadt

Gegenwart und Zukunft des öffentlichen Raums

Jürgen Krusche (Ed.), Berlin 2017

Which cities would we like to live in today and in future? How have the fear of terrorism and large-scale migration movements, as well as social disparities, changed our public spaces? Who is involved in the complex transformations?
The Ambivalent City addresses the increasing fragmentation of our cities as a reaction to growing political, economic, and social pressure. The focus is on the increasing demand for security and monitoring and on the associated diminishment of freely accessible public spaces, social mixing, and communal participation. This is supplemented by the presentation of participative and self-governed movements that go against these occlusive tendencies. Furthermore, the role of photography in urban research is illuminated. The book advocates social diversity—even in seemingly uncertain times—and a new relevance of the concept of the Open City.

German
176 Pages
approx. 75 col. and b/w
Format: 16,5 x 24 cm
ISBN 978-3-86859-467-6
EUR 28,00

Bureau Savamala Belgrade

Urban Research and Practice in a Fast-changing Neighborhood

Jürgen Krusche, Philipp Klaus (Ed.), Berlin 2015

Savamala, a once traditional district of Belgrade that had fallen into neglect since the 1950s, has been experiencing rapid changes in recent years. Owing to its location close to the city centre, on the bank of the Sava, it has become attractive for those within Belgrade creative and gastronomic circles, as well as for global investors.

This study by the Bureau Savamala research team documents not only the material and socio-economic changes in Savamala, but also changes in local perceptions. Local architects, artists, and cultural figures present projects that were carried out in 2013 as part of Urban Incubator Belgrade and were designed to contribute to the regeneration of Savamala, avoiding the negative consequences of gentrification. The experience of Savamala clearly shows to what extent upgrading is possible and worthwhile. It also shows what its limits are and how culture, design, and art can initiate and guide these processes.

English / partly Serbian
208 Pages
185 illustrations
Softcover
Dimensions: 16.5 x 24 cm
ISBN 978-3-86859-359-4
CHF 38.80 | € 29.80

Labor Mülheim

Künstlerisches Forschen in Feldern zwischen Prekarität und Kreativität

Jürgen Krusche (Ed.), Berlin 2015

The city of Mülheim on the Ruhr in North Rhine-Westphalia exemplarily brings together the specific urbanity of the Ruhr region as a polycentric collection of settlements and the urban, as well as political challenges and potential of a region in a process of structural change. Using artistic and cultural science methods, four teams from the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK) – in collaboration with the cultural organization Urbane Künste Ruhr (Urban Arts Ruhr) – carried out an urban laboratory in Mülheim in 2013, revealing and studying many different layers of the city in the process and making them visible and audible. This book documents the various projects and places them within a wider context. This opens up new approaches to the question of the relationship between art and the city: what role does artistic research play in urban transformation processes, how can it contribute to discursive, as well as aesthetic “knowledge” about a city, and not only illuminate social and urban development, but also actively contribute to shaping it?

Website
Labor Mühlheim

German
184 pages
56 coloured illustrations
soft cover
Dimensions: 16,5 x 24 cm
ISBN 978-3-86859-360-0
€ 28.00

Published as volume 14 of the Institute for Contemporary Art Research series

Early Human Figure Drawing in Ontogeny

Cross-Contextual Aspects

Dieter Maurer (Ed.)

Radikal ambivalent

Commitment and responsibility in the arts today

Rachel Mader (Ed.), Zurich 2014

What is the relationship between art and politics today? Does committed artistic production impact on public and political space? How readable are visual messages in art and culture? In recent times, ambiguous and indecisive codes and signs have been replacing clear and unambiguous visual language. While some attribute this to the complexity of the content and variety of the forms, others interpret it as a political strategy of refusal vis-à-vis instrumentalization. In recent years, art criticism has gone so far as to make ambiguity a prime sign of quality of substantive art. The essays in this publication critically examine the phenomenon of “ambivalence”, investigating its mechanisms and social functions.

With contributions from Helmut Draxler, Thomas Hirschhorn, Verena Krieger, Brigitta Kuster, Barbara Lange, Rachel Mader, Uriel Orlow, Gerald Raunig, Johanna Schaffer, Peter Schneemann, Bernadett Settele, Nina Zschocke and Tim Zulauf.

German edition
with illustrations
soft cover
272 pages, 22.5 x 16.5 cm
CHF 40.00 | € 26.95

ISBN: 978-3-03734-419-4

Published as volume 12 of the Institute for Contemporary Art Research series

MIND THE GAP

Kunsthof Zürich, Materials & Documents 1993 – 2013

Christoph Schenker, Andrea Portmann (Ed.), Zurich 2013

In the middle of central Zurich, a gap has persisted between buildings for more than twenty years. The Kunsthof Zürich, called into being in 1993 on the initiative of what is today the Zurich University of the Arts, realized in this extraordinary place more than 90 outdoor exhibitions and projects of nationally and internationally known artists, as well as students at the university. The Kunsthof is characterized by openness and enclosure. On the one hand, it constitutes a clearly defined situation similar to that of a gallery space due to its spatial delimitation. On the other hand as wasteland, it is marked by topological and conceptual openness. As such an in-between place, it enabled a specific kind of artistic exploration, inciting in Zurich discourse about art in public spaces and about the potential of alternative art venues. The publication brings together all of the artistic projects and exhibitions that were realized in the Kunsthof between 1993 and 2013. An extensive body of hitherto unpublished materials and documents from the archives gives profound insight into the wide spectrum of artistic works and offers surprising perspectives on artistic positions.

With contributions from Christoph Schenker and Daniel Kurjaković

German and English edition
751 illustrations, of it 26 coloured loose insert
1248 pages, 26,5 × 19 cm
soft cover
ISBN 978-3-03746-177-8
CHF 48.00 | € 38.00 | $ 45.00

Published as volume 11 of the Institute for Contemporary Art Research series

Supplementary audio/video documents
www.editionfink.ch/kunsthof

How pictures find houses and the house comes into the picture.

Dieter Maurer, Claudia Riboni (Ed.), Zurich 2013

Like buildings, pictures have not “simply been there.” Nor do they appear out of nowhere. They come into being, are perceived, and develop. That in this process pictures have an inseparable relationship to buildings and vice versa is obvious.There is a history to this relationship that begins at some point — usually quite early. In this book Dieter Maurer and Claudia Riboni use drawings and paintings, commonly referred to as “doodles” or “children’s drawings,” to trace this “early his- tory.” But the authors are less interested in the childlike content of the works than in the drawings and paint- ings themselves. And they rely on their skills of observation : Drawings and paintings are compiled in six chapters, each of which illuminates a central aspect of early infantile drawings and the depiction of buildings in them.The texts in the book play a secondary role to the illustrations and are limited to concise and pro- found thoughts about the relationship between pictures and buildings.

How pictures find houses and the house comes into the picture are among the findings of many years of extended research conducted by Dieter Maurer and Claudia Riboni on the question of early infantile pic- tures and their development. Unlike an academic trea- tise, this book places its entire trust in the power of the pictures themselves, using the observation of them to answer elementary questions about the picture, the house and the human.

Softcover
400 Pages, 24 × 17 cm
ISBN 978-3-905929-38-6
CHF 58.00

Published as volume 9 of the Institute for Contemporary Art Research series

Art as Compact Knowledge

Art Public Zurich:
A Research Project

Christoph Schenker, Zurich 2007

The publication presents an overview of the research project Art Public Zurich and also places it within a theoretical framework. After introducing the Mission Statement and the Organization Art in Public Space Zurich, developed in cooperation with the City of Zürich, the methodological approach will be described that underlies the project, namely, to determine factors that will open contextual fields of reference for public art, thereby strengthening its social relevance. One section of the contribution leads to the thesis that art in public space – similar to comparable phenomena in the sciences – can trigger a profound re-evaluation of the concept of art. The closing section examines artistic research and its significance in our knowledge society.

This booklet is an English-language supplement to the German publication Kunst und Öffentlichkeit: Kritische Praxis der Kunst im Stadtraum Zürich, edited by Christoph Schenker and Michael Hiltbrunner (Zurich: JRP|Ringier, 2007). It includes the English version of the survey article «Kunst als dichtes Wissen: Das Forschungsprojekt Kunst Öffentlichkeit Zürich» (pp. 29–48) by Christoph Schenker. The booklet also reproduces four artworks that were completed only after the original German volume was published – public artworks by Harun Farocki, Zilla Leutenegger, Lawrence Weiner and Sislej Xhafa.

In English
Four colour pictures
28 pages, 16.5 x 24 cm
ISBN 978-3-9525150-2-0
Open Access DOI

Volume 2A of the Institute for Contemporary Art Research series