The project „At Home in Wollishofen“ was investigating the new types of identity emerging in our globalized world and the means through which one can attain a sense of belonging. The project was located in and focused on the Wollishofen neighborhood of Zurich, and tried, through artistic interventions, to create settings for a “communicative home”. The underlining thought was that having a sense of home is having a sense of connectedness to others.
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„At Home in Wollishofen“ was realized in collaboration with the Community Center Wollishofen and with the support from the Rote Fabrik, as part of the series of events celebrating its 30th anniversary. One of the factors that triggered the idea of the project were the public construction works that took place in many areas of Wollishofen, which changed the face of the neighborhood, brought in new inhabitants (the workers), made the streets narrower and interaction more frequent. The goal of the project is to create “spaces of encounter”, where the inhabitants of Wollishofen, the passers by, the artists and the street workers could meet, interact and maybe feel “at home”. The “headquarters” of the project were situated in the Artfoyer Cavigelli (Albistrasse 27) and the Community Center Wollishofen (Albisstrasse 25). From here, the project expanded through actions and performances into other areas of the neighborhood. The artistic interventions were all site-specific responses to the neighborhood of Wollishofen, raising questions about how we interact with each other within a community, about public versus private spaces, about recognizing the others not just in their stereotypical quality of being “workers“ or “artists“ or “immigrants“.
Artists: Mo Diener, Genia L.-Hünemörder, Lada Nakonechna, Anuradha Pathak
Duration: 12th of June – 1st of July 2010
The artist Genia Loginova-Hünemörder (RU) made autographed photographic portraits of the street workers on Albistrasse and exhibited them in the windows of the GZ Wollishofen. The artist gave thus a “face” and a name to these anonymous workers, who were in fact temporary inhabitants of the neighborhood, portraying them like real heroes who “bring our streets in order“. The artist Mo Diener (CH) installed herself at Cavigelli Artfoyer for a temporary stay of three days. During the opening performance For a provisory stay she collected her necessary day-by-day objects from different residents' homes in Wollishofen. The first day the artist welcomed the participants with a housewarming party, followed by a lecture about Swiss performance history and collective interventions in public space. During the opening evening the artist acquired participants to the workshops she held on the 24th, 25th and 26th of June. Besides her installation “Die Welt gehoert (nicht) allen“ in the window of the Artfoyer, the Ukrainian artist Lada Nakonechna performed a series of actions in public space entitled “Magic Protective Circle”. The artist handed yellow chalk and a set of instructions to people, encouraging them to delimit their personal/private territory in public space, by drawing a circle around themselves.The aim of the actions was to investigate the resulting topography of the circles: whether they intersect, whether participants include or exclude each other from their symbolic territories.
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