Dead End?
<p><em>Bilingual in English and German</em></p> <p>In the 1990s, Zürich experienced what amounted to an art miracle: numerous new galleries opened, the Kunsthalle was founded, the retail giant Migros launched its own museum and countless self-organized art spaces made their mark on the Zürich art scene. Two ventures in particular drew international attention: the art conglomerate that was established in 1996 on the premises of the former Löwenbräu brewery and the Shedhalle that met with a highly controversial response after a programmatic reorganization. They constituted two poles in the then newly forming Zürich art scene: the Löwenbräu-Areal with its proximity to the art market on one side and the Shedhalle with its political program on the other.</p> <p>A nostalgic look back to the Zürich “art miracle” is hardly productive. Rather, this Focus takes the current mood of crisis at the Löwenbräukunst and the Shedhalle as an opportunity to look back on the 1990s in Zurich, and would like to formulate questions and approaches on this basis: What artistic strategies, theoretical debates and issues that were negotiated at the time continue to be relevant and worth drawing on today? How have social and economic conditions changed in the past 25 years? What perspectives and new personal and institutional constellations are the result of this? In the coming months we will publish a series of essays here and we invite anyone interested to participate in this open editorial process and contribute their ideas. For 2020, we are planning an open editorial meeting and further events…</p>
Issue Editor: Pablo Müller
Contributors: Pablo Müller, Peter Spillmann, Raphael Gygax, Eva Presenhuber, Michael Hiltbrunner
Series Editor: Lucie Kolb, Pablo Müller, Barbara Preisig, Judith Welter
Designer: Sabo Day
Programmer: FLX Labs
Part of: Brand-New-Life Magazine
ISSN: 2297-9220