February 20–May 15, 2016
Kunsthalle Zürich
Limmatstrasse 270
CH-8005 Zurich
T +41 44 272 15 15
Until the 1980s—and in rare cases until today—playgrounds were places for social experiments, risky projects, and spectacular sculptures. Architects, urban planners, artists, parents, and children were invited to leave their comfort zone and to venture something new. Curated by Gabriela Burkhalter, The Playground Project at Kunsthalle Zürich brings many of these exemplary, but nowadays forgotten initiatives, pioneering acts, and adventures back, and installs three playgrounds for children to run, hide and climb. May our cities invent new playgrounds!
The place and the idea of the playground also raises questions about the relationships between different generations. The experiences, memories, and stakes of our changing lives and times do overlap at the climbing poles and sandpits: toddlers’s games, youth folly, parental worry, grandparental bliss…The playground blends together what elsewhere seems restricted to succession. Therefore, the theory and educational program of The Playground Project focuses on joint activity: A room full of things to design your own playground, physical excitement at our monthly yoga classes in the exhibition, public guided tours about the playground’s own biography, and a look behind the scenes of playground production and discourse at a day-long symposium with international guests.
The symposium “Free and daring! Play(grounds) as a place of identification, community, and disorder in the city” takes place on Friday, April 22 from 9:30am to 6pm at Kunsthalle Zurich, and gathers activists, designers, and researchers to discuss and define the conditions for autonomous, free, and daring play within urban space. What does the creation of places that challenge kids require? And what must be the contribution of the given community towards it?
With Gabriela Burkhalter (curator of the exhibition, Basel), Marion Ebert (activist, Kinderbaustelle Biel), Tim Gill (activist, author, scholar, London), Axel Fischer (Head of Maintenance Grün Stadt Zürich), Sven Goebel (Pro Juventute, Divisional Manager “Free Space and Participation,” Zurich) and Petra Stocker (Pro Juventute, Project Coordinator “Play and Social Space,” Zurich), Karl Guyer (Director GZ Wipkingen), Alberto Nanclares da Veiga & Manuel Polanco Pérez-Llantada (Basurama, artist collective, Madrid), Helle Nebelong (landcape architect, Copenhagen), Sam Roth (Director open youth work Wattwil/Project Coordinator Kinderbaustelle Wattwil), Sreejata Roy (artist/pedagogue, Delhi), Xavier de la Salle (Group Ludic, artist collective, France), and others.
Entry: 50 CHF / 30 CHF members / 15 CHF reduced (incl. exhibition ticket), final panel discussion free
More information, detailed program and registration here.
For more information on the exhibition and full artist list please click here.
For dates and more information on other public programs please click here.
The exhibition is accompanied by a comprehensive catalog: The Playground Project, edited by Gabriela Burkhalter, with contributions by Daniel Baumann, Gabriela Burkhalter, Vincent Romagny, Sreejata Roy, and Xavier de la Salle, German/English, Kunsthalle Zürich/JRP|Ringier 2016
Preview: RATZ FATZ ZAUBER WAS – Fairs and Fairy Tales
a project by Luca Beeler, Cedric Eisenring, and Carmen Tobler
Liste Art Fair Basel, June 14–19, 2016
Children’s books are narratives brought into nurseries by parents. Yet those books also transgress the protected private space towards a broader social sphere. Children’s books carry a peculiar set of expectations and aspirations: romantic ideas of the primordial, the “childishly naive,” as well as enlightenment models of education, or the discovery of the child as utopian matter. RATZ FATZ ZAUBER WAS – Fairs and Fairy Tales presents the stories and didactics of numerous examples, from the historical avant-gardes until today. At Liste Art Fair Basel the collection takes shape as a group of sculptural beings out of whose bellies the books are to take. Each day at 3pm special guests will read from their favorite examples.
Luca Beeler (*1985) lives in Zurich and works as a curator. From 2012 until 2014 he ran the art space Muda Mura Muri together with Lorenzo Bernet and Yannic Joray. Cédric Eisenring (*1983) is an artist living and working in Zurich. Carmen Tobler (*1985) is a book designer (a.o. Studio Marie Lusa) and works at Galerie Gregor Staiger in Zurich. Together they run the publishing house Bleach.
Kunsthalle Zürich is regularly supported by:
Stadt Zürich Kultur, Kanton Zürich Fachstelle Kultur, LUMA Foundation, Whale Foundation.
The exhibition is supported by Ernst Göhner Foundation and Graham Foundation.
