Sunday 13th December 2015, 2:30pm
Getaway #11: RELAX (chiarenza & hauser & co.)
RELAX chose this Sunday’s getaway destination.
– Marie-Antoinette and Daniel work together. They have been ever since they met. They added a “&co” to both their last names because they like to expand their cooperation and to include other people in their work. When I flipped through their catalogue lately I was astonished to find a lot of things listed they had not done. The catalogue’s retrospect of works includes all sorts of unrealized projects: proposals that were dismissed, Kunst am Bau concepts that were turned down, and so forth. Thinking about ”work” and “art work” it seemed brilliant to me to include hours of work, that at first glance were wasted. Useless efforts that point to the normality of working without result, without success or merit. To stretch visibly the range of activities that make up the art game.
Rather excited I told a friend. He did not think it was brilliant. He thought it was – vain. To add things that never led anywhere to your official record, making it look even more extensive.
On the catalogue’s first page it says: du bist was du liest wir sind was du willst. **) –
**) a possible translation would be: you are what you read we are what you want.
[Report]
Not knowing the destination we followed their steps: Passing the branch of ZKB in Heinrichstrasse all of us pressed our noses against the glass to see into the space that should be containing an artpiece by RELAX, made of floor inlays forming two words taken from the company sheet: Gewinnbeteiligung and Gewinnverteilung. The ZKB refused the artpiece arguing that the sentences’ meaning was too radical. At the same time the camera kept passing around and prooved the existence of simple ways to deal with -beteilung and -verteilung.
Arriving at the main station we hopped into an elevator, squeezing in, the whole group at once. On the second floor a warmly lit room with palm trees welcomed us, accompanied by christmas decoration and an intense smell of warmed up food.
I don’t remember any of the conversation topics up until now. All of them were erased by the sincere eagerness that followed. We spent 90 intense minutes of re-assembling the city of Zurich from 1000 pieces. From a surprising lot of green, a surprising amount of blue and an astonishing number of fragmented street names never heard of before.
It’s rather easy to make your way along the water lines, the rivers, next come the railways, then major traffic junctions. A lot of the rest remained unknown and blanc.
Staring down at the fragmented city map it seemed liberating to see Zurich with blancs: as if this undefined space could open up for yet unimagined things to happen.
*) Mirjam Bayerdörfer invited RELAX for the eleventh Outside Sunday.