Methods:
Faculty and student exchanges between Chisinau (NGO Oberliht & Academy of Arts) and ZHdK; experimental artistic research in post-communist urban space with excursions and final exhibitions.
Goals:
Initiated by Jörg Scheller in 2015, cooperation with the NGO Oberliht and the Chisinau Academy of Arts aims to familiarize students from Zurich with the “post-communist condition” in the hybrid Republic of Moldova, located between Western and Eastern Europe. The main focus lies on “Art & Civil Society.” It is important to gain a more complex picture of the unstable state, which usually only appears in the media as a clichéd “hotspot of Europe” (Der Spiegel) in connection with poverty, crime and prostitution.
The experiences and research are discussed on-site in group meetings and mentorships. In addition, students from Zurich and Chisinau will also work on works of art and present them at a final exhibition in the Chisinau art space Zpatiu. The programme will also include seminars and workshops by lecturers from both countries as well as excursions (e.g. Tiraspol, Tipova, rural Ukraine). In 2017, the cooperation was carried out for the first time as a summer school, in which curators, artists and students from Suchum/i also participated with the support of the artasfoundation (Dagmar Reichert).
Students try out focused, concentrated and swift artistic work in an unfamiliar environment; make new contacts in a largely unfamiliar region; practise ad hoc organisation and improvisation; learn to deal with language barriers; respond to the environment with freely chosen artistic techniques and procedures, e.g. text, photography, video, performance.
Quintessence:
Open-minded, long-term exchange on equal terms between students, lecturers and activists from Chisinau and Zurich. Communicating through experimental art projects in post-communist urban space.
Funding granted by Dossier Committee: CHF 2'000.00