OTHERWISE presents POLYMORPHIC FUTURES - an interactive exhibition showcasing works by 8 artist-researchers who took part in a collaborative learning journey over the course of one year.
In the face of the intertwined social and ecological crisis reductive doomsday scenarios have gained popularity. In an attempt to provide alternative, more hopeful narratives we set out to explore the potential of performative practices to imagine new forms of collectivity, of being attentive to environmental processes and aware of our own entanglements with them and with one another. POLYMORPHIC FUTURES converges and materializes the collective process in the form of an interactive exhibition. The audience is invited to join as active agents by exploring different ecosystems of thought, attending to transformative micro-practices, or inhabiting proposals for multi-species collaboration. Not one but many different positions and voices, in their difference, make up the polymorphic universe.
You can join the guided tour by Flurina Gradin, Seraina Dür und Jonas Gillmann through the closeby main station and look at it anew from the point of view of invasive species and animal inhabitants. Marit Mihklepp’s sound work invites you to listen to the troubled histories of fossilized organisms as they shift from shells to fuel to climate threads reminding us that awe and wonder always appear side by side. Oftentimes climate change is too big and vague of a concept to grasp which is why Karolina Sobecka’s audio-visual installation will ground the making of micro-climates in a heatmap generated from the surrounding area in Zurich. Out of place and time, Michail Rybakov’s set of visual and installative works beg the question if there is something like vegetal intimacy and if we have the right tools to comprehend it. While Vanessa Lorenzo Toquero’s performance equips us with a set of prostheses needed in order to recognize our entanglements with non-human others. Finally, Bernadette Köbele's work deals with Putin's war against Ukraine. With her artistic research on the (post-)colonial masquerade, she takes a critical look at the bodies of the military and warfare and sets a sign against a universalist doctrine.
Throughout the evening you can engage with the presented works and our fellow artist-researchers, learn more about their working process and become part of the polymorphic universe.
Part I
19:00 - 20:15 Trainstation Temporalities. Guided Tour. Join us in experiencing Zurich’s main station as an ecosystem. Following invasive plants, animals that are considered troublemakers, the biotope Gleisfeld and the renaturated Sihl, our view of the seemingly well-known slowly changes. Participating artist-researchers: Flurina Gradin, Seraina Dür and Jonas Gillmann. The tour will be held in German.
Part II
20:30 - 22:00 Interactive Exhibition. Gessnerallee, Stall 6. Explore our polymorphic universe consisting of video works, sound installations and performances and exchange with the artist-researchers over a drink and snack from the bar. Participating artist-researchers: Marit Mihklepp, Karolina Sobecka, Bernadette Köbele, Michail Rybakov, Vanessa Lorenzo Toquero
| Curation | Benjamin Burger und Michaela Büsse |
| Co-Production | Gessnerallee |
| Funded by | Pro Helvetia, Migros Kulturprozent, Ernst Göhner Stiftung |
