Studio Eine Phantastik

24.5.–29.7.2018
Opening: Wednesday, May 23, 6pm

Let’s make like it was the introduction to an exhibition on the processes used by imagination and art to invent stories… Studio Eine Phantastik, presented at the Shedhalle in Zurich from May 24 to July 29, 2018, could be described using the past tense kids brandish when they are about to enter a fairy tale, placing the audience on the threshold in which the final preparations for the game are settled, between the true truth and the pretend truth.

The works of the invited artists rely on imagination and its ability to generate a reality in which nature is treacherous in its innocence, where there can be no creation without a certain ambiguity. Between fable and fantasy, Studio Eine Phantastik allows us to discover the tools of the trade of that unique figure of the writer, educator, experimenter with languages embodied by Gianni Rodari (1920-1980), tools constructed through trial and error and the concrete character of experience in the world of childhood. They are instruments capable of derailing habits, away from the upbringing consumed by common sense; tools conceived for teachers in kindergartens and elementary schools, activists, agitators of children’s theater, workers in libraries, university researchers, school janitors, students in search of an original thesis.

The result is a sort of raw material, a coming and going between many stories in a rhapsodic time, with complete freedom to follow, at every step, new paths, sudden suggestions, detours. Where incompletion is productive. Stories without a feeling of risk, produced by specialists in digression, escape, invention, somersaults, that like a gaping rip are destined to widen gradually, imagining that radical communism where the adults are the ones that have need of the children. Not vice versa.
To be continued…

Studio Eine Phantastik will develop its research through artworks, documents, screenings, workshop and lectures. Participants include: Archiv der Kinder- und Jugendzeichnung der Stiftung Pestalozzianum, Vincenzo Castella , Enzo Cucchi, Harun Farocki, Anna Lehninger, Narimane Mari, Alfred Messerli, Giulia Piscitelli, Hinrich Sachs, Sarah Staton, Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, Betty Woodman, Jack Zipes.

Shedhalle is open on Tuesday until Friday from 2-6pm and on Saturday and Sunday from noon – 6pm.

PROGRAM

26.04.   6:30pm Lecture
Jack Zipes: Fairy Tales with Wings: Reading Fairy Tales through Picture Postcards

27.04.   2:15pm Workshop
Jack Zipes: Learning to Change the World from Fairy Tales

09.05.   6pm Film screening and discussion
Narimane Mari: Childhood in the Revolution

20.06.   4pm Workshop
Vincenzo Castella: Detecting Reality

26.06.   6pm Lectures