manuel arturo abreu (they/them) (b. 1991, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic) is a non-disciplinary artist from the Bronx who lives and works on lands of Multnomah, Cowlitz, Chinook, Kalapuya, Klackamas, Grand Ronde Confederation, Siletz Confederation, and other First Peoples of the Pacific Northwest. They use what is at hand in a process of magical thinking with attention to ritual aspects of aesthetics. Since 2015, they have co-facilitated home school, a free pop-up art school with a curriculum of non-genre-conforming multimedia edutainment. Recent projects have taken place at Veronica, Seattle (2021, solo); Kunstraum Niederösterreich, Vienna (2021); Athens Biennale 7 (2021); HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark, Graz (2021); AB Lobby Gallery, Portland State University (2019, solo); Yaby, Madrid (2019, with Precious Okoyomon); MoMA and MoMA PS1, New York (2018); Rhizome and New Museum, New York (2017). abreu has published two books of poetry, List of Consonants (Bottlecap, 2015) and transtrender (Quimérica / Ugly Duckling, 2016), as well as a book of critical writing, Incalculable Loss (Institute for New Connotative Action Press, 2018).

Philipp Bergmann (no pronoun) and Thea Reifler (they/them)

Philipp Bergmann and Thea Reifler work as curators, artists, social justice trainers, teachers and researchers in the field of visual art and performance. Their process-based works and interdisciplinary projects are influenced by science fiction as well as queer-feminist theory and practice. They have shown artistic projects in the fields of film, (sound) installations, performance and music theater at various institutions and festivals.

For the years 2020-2025, Thea Reifler and Philipp Bergmann are working as artistic directors of Shedhalle Zurich. In the years 2021 and 2022 Philipp Bergmann and Thea Reifler are also working as the artistic co-directors of Bone Performance Festival in Bern. Thea Reifler teaches art at the architecture department of ETH, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich. Philipp Bergmann is part of the research project “COLLECTING THE EPHEMERAL Prerequisites and Possibilities for Making Performance Art Last”, at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Art. At HSLU Lucerne, Philipp also works as a Docent in Bachelor of Arts.

They have shown artistic projects in the fields of film, (sound) installations, performance and music theater at Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart (Berlin), at the 3HD-Festival (Berlin), at NOWY Teatr (Warsaw), Mousonturm (Frankfurt) at Zürcher Theater Spektakel (Zurich), at Hellerau – European Center for the Arts (Dresden), at the SPIELART Festival (Munich), at the Darmstadt Opera, at the Performing Arts Festival (Berlin) at the Sophiensælen (Berlin), Radialsystem (Berlin) and at the Pogo Bar at Kunstwerke KW (Berlin).

Shedhalle as a space for process-based art.

Processes are a tool to open up unknown spaces of thinking and action. It is at the core of our work. We continue a history that allowed authority to be transferred from artists and institutions to the audience. Art takes part in the creation of actual communities.

The world is shifting, and art institutions are charged with negotiating social questions. Hence platforms, which dynamically promote social, technological and ecological change are increasingly important.

Essential issues converge in the cultural sector: debates around the inability to act politically, the empowerment of previously marginalised groups, and ecological sustainability. Museums, festivals, and theatres are laboratories for change and testing grounds for utopias. In this, we see the purpose of Shedhalle, and we respond to the need for new strategies of exhibition-making.

The idea behind process-based art begins with experimentations in the middle of the 20th century, i.e. the era when genres were dissolved in favour of a new conception of art. The genesis of the work was just as important as the final product—if not more so. Painters staged themselves in the process, sculptures became polyvalent entities, theatre approached performance art and the other way around.

The new definition of artwork has left its mark on theatre and on music, and the integration of different media is by now a standard procedure of contemporary art. However, the permeability of works and disciplines cannot be told as a simple story of progress, much less as a neatly defined narrative, because it is due to much larger social, political, and cultural changes.

www.shedhalle.ch