ART, SELF
& SYSTEM

Edited by Donatella Bernardi
Published by Sternberg Press
English
326 pages
16 x 22.5 cm
ISBN 978-3-95679-488-9

Price: 108 lei


Contributions by Jeremy Ayer, Velibor Barisic, Donatella Bernardi, Amos Bollag, Katharina Brandl, Clifford E. Bruckmann, Gioia Dal Molin, Philip Frowein, Désirée Myriam Gnaba, Noëlle Guidon, Adrian Hanselmann, Vanessà Heer, Dijan Kahrimanovic, Maya Lama, Matthias Liechti, Romain Mader, Marisa Meier, Javor Milanov, Fidel Morf, Angi Nend, Dominic Neuwirth, Leila Peacock, Elodie Pong, Dorothee Richter, Nils Röller, Evan Ruetsch, Antonio Scarponi, Christoph Schifferli, Claudia Stöckli, Aurélie Strumans, Raphael Stucky, Jan Vorisek.

The artist as entrepreneur has become a common topic of discussion. Here, however, we put forward the notions of “self” and “system.” First, every artistic practice is self-reflexive and self-contextualizing. Second, each system an artist builds allows for innovation. Let’s construct a space where we inevitably find ourselves together with others, even if we feel lonely, like a witch lost in a library of artists’ books. Let’s invent our right to do so. Let’s enter the world of smell and write about a megalomaniac art school while documenting a generation of art students and their studios with analogue photography. How does anyone even manage—from making objects to performing one’s own existence? Device, organon, animal.

This book arises from the 2018 activities of the MA Fine Arts program at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK). It reflects the conviction that an arts school can be a pedagogic nexus dedicated to the transmission of knowledge, experimentation, and research, as much as a locus for civic and critical debate and exhibition, involved in its community, locally and globally.