Painter, writer, inventor of “Art Brut”, Jean Dubuffet (1901-1985) was a major figure on the 20th century art scene. This exhibition shows how Jean Dubuffet combines his painting and writing activities with the research he has devoted to what he calls Art Brut. It presents his artistic production in all its diversity, with a particular emphasis on showing objects and documents resulting from the explorations he has carried out by visiting museums of ethnography or popular art, as well as various collections dedicated to the “art of the mad”.
It’s time to take your capsule! No, we’re not talking about a medicine, but rather about something whose effects could be similar to a vitamin shot: a bit of Elsewhere… at home! “A Bit of Elsewhere in Your Home” is a micro-series of daily episodes based on culture, science fiction and good humour. Because we all need it, and at the moment it’s difficult (or rather impossible) to go out to take care of our morale: we’ll bring you every day a little bit of Ailleurs, our Ailleurs, the one of the museum and its collections, and this, until April 30th at least. So get ready to discover works, games, comics, books, objects… and to meet the partners and actors of the museum! Hang on, we’re coming up fresh, motivated and disinfected, to make you laugh and think… Let’s spread the culture virus!
The symposium “Revisiting Black Mountain College: Cross-Disciplinary Experiments and Their Potential for Democratization (in Times of Post-Democracy)” asked questions in relation to anti-democratic tendencies in many countries worldwide. How can education still hold up democratic values, while at the same time presumably measuring its success by careers in the market? This issue brings together contributions from participants of the conference and adds further contributions by Andres Janser, Olga von Schubert, Caroline Adler, Boris Buden, Lucy Bayley, Sascia Bailer, Simon Fleury, Gilly Karjevsky, Asli Uludag, and Mieke Matzke.The interview by Ronald Kolb with Bitten Stetter, Brandon Farnsworth, Dorothee Richter, Jochen Kiefer, Martin Jaeggi, and Paolo Bianchi—all professors or lecturers at the Zurich University of the Arts—provides an internal perspective of today’s curriculum-based universities in relation to an education model like Black Mountain College—which can be seen as the opposite.
“I strongly believe in the importance of having physical, embodied experiences. It matters to actually engage with our senses.” Olafur Eliasson
At its centre is a large scale installation created exclusively for Zurich that addresses a key issue of our age: the relationship and interplay between human and non-human actors on Earth. In ‘Symbiotic seeing’, Eliasson tackles themes such as coexistence and symbiosis and aims to bring about a fundamental shift of perspective. The exhibition invites us not only to reflect on climate change – as a consequence of human action – but also to comprehend the human being as part of a larger system. The socially and environmentally committed artist, who was appointed Goodwill Ambassador for climate action and the Sustainable Development Goals by the UN in September 2019, proposes an idea of the world based on coexistence and collaboration rather than competition. Eliasson’s art translates complex theoretical deliberations into spatial works that not only appeal to people rationally but also touch them emotionally and move them physically. He has been working for over twenty years with an interdisciplinary team that includes craftspeople, architects, media specialists and cooks. He is known for space-filling works, light works and sculptures that prompt audiences to reflect on themselves and the world as they experience them. His works often resemble scientific experiments. In contrast to scientists testing speculative hypotheses, however, Eliasson is interested in conjuring uncertainty and raising questions that can provide a space for new ideas, themes and thought experiments. In Eliasson’s art, the viewers or users play an active role. They interact with the works in different ways and, in doing so, they become their co-authors. Many of his works invite the viewers to consider their own position in the room in relationship to the work and other visitors. In a wider sense, this means becoming aware of one’s own role in the world at large. Eliasson’s works therefore also function as models of society and of the relationships between individuals and groups.
Research pin-wall, detail. Studio Olafur Eliasson, 2019, Photo: Studio Olafur Eliasson
“The central theme is the role of the viewer or user. The question is whether their activities or actions are what actually brings the artwork into being. One can say that, without their participation, it has no meaning.” Olafur Eliasson
Installation view Symbiotic seeing, Visualisation by Studio Olafur Eliasson, 2019
One important inspiration for Symbiotic seeing was the research conducted by the American biologist Lynn Margulis (1938–2011) and the chemist James Lovelock. In the 1960s, the two researchers formulated the ‘Gaia hypothesis’. Gaia, from the Greek root meaning ‘Earth’, was the name of the mother goddess who personified the planet. Margulis and Lovelock hypothesized that the planet Earth and the biosphere can be understood as an organism, given that the biosphere (the entirety of all organisms) creates and maintains the conditions not only for life, but also for the evolution of more complex organisms. In her book The Symbiotic Planet (1998), Margulis goes on to explain how symbiosis in the development of life is just as important as the ‘survival of the fittest’ formulated by Charles Darwin. She describes how symbiotic relationships take place at the micro as well as at the macro level: ‘[H]umans are not the work of God but thousands of millions of years of interaction among highly responsive microbes.’ Just like the transition from single-celled to multicellular organisms was based on cooperation, the populating of Earth was only possible thanks to fungi and plants working together. According to Margulis, all lifeforms together regulate the Earth’s temperature and atmosphere – an interesting idea in the era of the Anthropocene, during which the relationship between humans and the Earth has become severely unbalanced. (You can find out more about this topic in the exhibition catalogue.)
A modern take on the historic struggle to liberate the French capital from Nazi oppression has been launched at the Museum of the Liberation of Paris.
The museum, which opened in 1994 as the Musée Jean Moulin in honour of
one of the Resistance’s greatest heroes, has since been renamed and it
is now a pioneer of ground-breaking mixed reality technology. The
Microsoft system, HoloLens, has been deployed in the museum to bring
much of the final struggle to overturn the German invaders to life.
According
to Nino Sapina and Diego Fernandez-Bravo of Realcast – the mixed
reality specialists who developed the high-tech visitor experience – the
opportunity to use HoloLens
at the museum was an exciting one. The museum is situated in a
government bomb shelter that was first constructed in 1938. However, the
site was left unoccupied during the period of Nazi takeover in the
French capital from June 1940 onwards. It ended up being used as a base
for some of the Resistance networks that sprung up in Paris. As of
August 1944, following D-Day, it became the centre of operations for the
Resistance as the Paris uprising began.
Manchester Museum recently returned items taken from Australia more than 100 years ago to Aboriginal leaders, the latest move in an ongoing debate over calls to “repatriate” museum artefacts to their countries of origin. It’s part of a wider discussion over to what degree museums need to reform and “decolonise” away from displaying collections that were gathered or stolen from other countries during the colonial era, in a way that portrays foreign cultures as strange or inferior and other nations as unsuitable possessors of the world’s cultural heritage and knowledge. Major institutions including the British Museum and the Victoria & Albert Museum have been caught up in the debate. One way forward may be found in digital technologies that can enable people to access representations of other cultures in fair, interesting ways, without cultural institutions needing to hold on to controversial artefacts. For example, with 3D imaging and 3D printing we can produce digital and physical copies of artefacts, allowing visitors to study and interact with them more closely than ever before.
Copying artefacts
Copying artefacts has a surprisingly long history. Many ancient Greek statues that we have today are actually Roman copies made hundreds of years after the originals. Famous Renaissance artists’ workshops regularly produced copies of artwork. In the 19th century, museums produced copies through processes that involved making a mould of the original item, such as casting and electrotyping. The famous diplodocus skeleton “Dippy” actually exists as a number of copies in museums all over the world.
Proactively addressing inequalities and exclusion becomes essential for museums when fulfilling their mission to serving society.
This becomes even more important in a context of
increasing movements of populations, polarisation and divisive public
discourses. Museums deal with these issues by working on diverse themes
such as participation, accessibility, well-being, gender,
marginalization and inclusion/exclusion through a variety of activities.
