Art, Self & System

How an art school can be a pedagogic nexus dedicated to the transmission of knowledge as well as a locus for civic and critical debate.The artist as entrepreneur has become a common topic of discussion. This book, however, puts 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 us 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 us invent our right to do so. Let us 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.
This book arises from the 2018 activities of the Masters of 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.
Contributors
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