Faculty of Invisibility: Assembly

Shedhalle / Exhibitions / Faculty of Invisibility: Versammlung

The Economic and Social Council, 1982. UN Photo/Milton Grant

It is a tradition of Shedhalle association to host one annual guestproject. This year the board of Shedhalle has selected the curatorial team of Faculty of Invisibility and is happy to present them and their project:

Shedhalle Guest Project «Faculty of Invisibility: Assembly»
10 July – 8 August 2010
Opening 9 July 2010 7pm, 8pm concert by Singer/Songwriter Clemence Freschard
Curated by Sönke Hallmann and Inga Zimprich

With Benjamin Cölle, Laurie Cohen, Maaike Engelen, Clemence Freschard, Jeanne van Heeswijk, Ingela Johansson, Achim Lengerer, M7red (Mauricio Corberlan, Pio Torroja),
p-r-o-x-y, Dagmar Reichert, Darren Rhymes, Jan Rolletschek, Elske Rosenfeld, Simone Schardt, Johan Siebers, Tanja Widmann and others
Loans by Robert Havemann Gesellschaft, Archiv Grünes Gedächtnis der Heinrich Böll Stiftung
Design by Maartje Dros, Francois Lombarts

Events:
/ Assembly “Faculty of Invisibility: Versammlung”, 16.–18.07.
/ Guided Tour with the curators through the exhibition, 21.07.
/ Open Workshops “The Central Round Table of the GDR”, 23./24.07.
/ Open Events “Department of Reading: Mass, Movement, Image”, 30.07.–01.08.

In its curatorial guest project the Faculty of Invisibility engages with the political place of the assembly. Along moments of institutionalisation it traces the question which possibilities of assembly the contemporary art institution suggests and allows for. The Faculty of Invisibility
proceeds by investigating forms of political speech, moments of inscription and acts of enforcement that make social articulations binding and recognizable. If the institution marks the threshold where articulations are inscribed into the realm of the visible and communicable, to question the institution’s political capacity today requires to exercise the institutional as a function of speech and to assemble within its mechanisms of showing and issuing.

The exhibition room conveys a series of settings similar to those that direct roles and spaces of speech in institutional entities. These spatial set-ups draw on such acts as the address, the foundation, the protocol, the delegation and the declaration to ask: What does it mean to gather within the language-based apparatus of the institution –– within those places the institution provides, but which in turn reproduce the institutional itself? What can it mean to gain articulation in them, to have a voice within them? How could one open a space of speech inside the institutional realm in which one’s own being-in-language becomes apparent and available?

Within this exhibition materials from archives of political entities are on display such as the United Nations, the Central Round Table of the GDR, personal peace-treaties of the GDR’s oppositional movement (both from the Robert Havemann Gesellschaft), the founding congress of the West-German Greens (from the Archiv Grünes Gedächtnis der Heinrich Böll Stiftung), records of meetings of Zürich’s city council as well as of the Shedhalle itself. In the video piece Staging Cities / Cuidades en Escena, M7red (Mauricio Corberlan, Pio Torroja, AR) develop a scenario of negotiation between human and non-human actors.

In addition to the exhibition display developed by the Faculty of Invisibility, designers Maartje Dros and Francois Lombarts create temporary shelters for guests in Shedhalle.

The exhibition project Faculty of Invisibility: Assembly is made possible with the kind support of Präsidialdepartement der Stadt Zürich, Bundesamt für Kultur, Migros Kulturprozent, Appenzeller Bier, Mineralquelle Gontenbad, Delinat, Het Blauwe Huis.

For more information please contact Inga Zimprich on ingazimprich@gmail.com or visit www.faculty.cc