The wooden chair sits hard under my bones, my neck is tense. My view is partly obstructed by the heads of students. The projection field is small compared to the size of the art space in Zurich West, where the public event takes place. On view is Andrea Fraser’s 2022 video performance This meeting is being recorded. The artist reenacts parts of Group Relations meetings she had held with other white- and female-identifying people about manifestations of internal racism in the U.S. I am following this well-tempered conversation. And while I analyze the group dynamics in the film from a certain distance, my chair suddenly begins to tremble.
This piece is a field report on the collapsing boundaries between art work, audience and class room, on confused speakers-positions, shared silences and monophonic discussions.

The following conversation took place in New York on May 19^th 2018 with loose ends recently tied. The original transcript was much longer. We nerded over mathematics, technology and gay politics, scrambling about on fun tangents. One could define these tangents as frivolous and furthermore position «frivolous» as having a particular anglo gay tone. This tone carries into the varying roles Charles takes as an artist. One role he recently took was creating the exhibition design for the Robert Rauschenberg retrospective Among Friends, at MoMA New York. His practice refuses a stable single categorization drawing on community and collaboration while sitting on the periphery of portraiture and media. Atlas’ position is outside of and in conversation with experimentation and improvisation, the live event and immersive environment. The freedom he takes radiates otherness and he has continuously placed himself at the forefront of new technologies, multi-screen installations, and live video mixing. 

Trotz des formulierten Anspruchs, aktuelle und kontroverse Kunst im Rahmen der Gasträume zu präsentieren, bleiben viele der gezeigten Kunstwerke in ihrer stadträumlichen Umgebung weitgehend hermetisch. Ein Problem, das mit dem wenig kontextsensiblen Drop-Sculpture-Ansatz der Arbeitsgruppe Kunst im öffentlichen Raum (AG KiöR) kaum zu bewältigen ist.

In her first major institutional show in Switzerland Claudia Comte delivers all the dull mid-range design we’ve come to expect, but here there’s a lot more and, now, with the incredulous air of credibility. Titled 10 Rooms, 40 Walls, 1059 m2, and featuring over 60 paintings, 40 sculptures, 40 wall paintings and some prints, it’s an epic ode to the big, dumb and aggressively anti-intellectual. 

Schon lange nicht mehr haben sich im Namen des Feminismus so viele Menschen auf die Strasse begeben wie am Women’s March on Washington. Die Demonstrierenden trugen die selbstgestrickten Pussyhats so zahlreich, dass sie die Menschenmassen pink einfärbten. Die Mützen wurden zu einem markanten visuellen Identifikationsmerkmal des Protests gegen die Trump-Administration. Sie stehen für einen mehrheitsfähigen Feminismus, allerdings mit fragwürdigen Referenzen.

Christian Jankowski spielt in seiner Arbeit gerne mit gesellschaftlichen Rollen. Für seine Ausstellung bei Contemporary Fine Arts (CFA) (15. Januar – 5. März 2016) machte er eine Schauspielerin kurzerhand zur Kuratorin seiner Retrospektive. Dieses Spiel ist jedoch keineswegs unverfänglich und zementiert ein sexistisches Geschlechterbild.