Zones of Kinship, Love, and Playbour

Zones to rest and simply be

If all of life is centered around work – how about work being a bit more like life, or like, living? Protozone7 at Shedhalle Zürich is dedicated to the realm of non-work, creating zones for invisible processes that take place when people rest, laugh, love and non-work. Such zones have become an endangered species. Their ecologies thrive on abundance and generosity. They don’t want anything from humanity in return.

These zones are there as themselves, full yet never complete, meshworks of possibilities that allow for stillness, pause, rest. Time is a scarcity yet mysteriously enough, there is more than enough of it here. The artistic practices assembled here deal with the often painful yet still romanticized blurring of life and work.

"Playbour" = Play + Labour

Over the last two years, questions around the infrastructures of life and work have been resurfacing more frequently. While modes of production such as the ‘homeoffice’ are being widely introduced, notions like ‘playbour’ promise a merging of labour, play and leisure into one single activity. Not only is this promise only meant for a few, it also often leads to extensive personal exhaustion.

Verknüpfung zur Vergangenheit des Ausstellungsortes

The walls of Shedhalle are reminiscent of its past as a production site for mechanical silk weaving from the late 19th century, when manual labour within textile fabrication moved from workers individual homes to industrial complexes. Protozone7 takes these moments and shifts in time as a horizon to reconsider old questions such as: How to buffer lives and living from total abstraction and financialization?

The artists invited developed their work within the pandemic. As many of us, they went through moments of crisis, depression, illness, loss, deprivation. They found ways to foster kinships and ecologies that supported these works without giving in to the logics of extraction. This zone hosts their specific and often slow practices, their ongoing engagements and meticulous care towards materials. “Zones of Kinship, Love, and Playbour” is curated by Lucie Tuma.

The exhibition is supported by ifa exhibition funding.

The funded artists are Claudia Hill, Kiran Kumār, aLifveForms (fed and cared for by JP Raether), and Enad Marouf.