Vorlesungsverzeichnis

On the occasion of Manifesta 12 in Palermo (June 16 – November 4, 2018), the MA Fine Arts program is planning a study trip from October 26 to November 4. The goal of this study trip is multilayered: experiencing Manifesta 12 and the collateral events and exhibitions; discovering Palermo as a complex city; and the fostering of a group dynamic between the participants, among students, among faculty members and obviously between students and faculty members. A parallel pool-seminar will also take place as part of this trip with a specific focus on engaging with the themes of Manifesta, in particular the notion of the interspecies as well as connecting with the concluding public program of Manifesta. The study trip is open to all students, selected on the basis of a motivation letter (a constructive way to learn about students’ motivation, as well as their knowledge and expectations regarding Palermo and Manifesta). It is also available to all MFA faculty members.

PARAMETERS
Travel from Zurich to Palermo is planned between Friday October 26, and Sunday 28th. During the first weekend, everyone can discover Manifesta. From Monday October 29 until Friday November 2, various activities are organized in Palermo under the umbrella of two programs. The group will come together for meals in order to share their thoughts and analysis. We will have access to a space at MINIMUM in the center of Palermo, where the group can meet, plan, organize their files and data, record/document/log their experiences [in a diary/journal], work and welcome their guests. Joint events organized for all participants, such as an encounter with Claire Fontaine, artist collective currently based in Palermo and other artists will also be scheduled.

PROGRAM #1: STUDAY VISIT PALERMO AND MANIFESTA 12 COLLATERAL EVENT IN BRANCACCIO
This program will include visits, meetings and a series of talks and workshops. On Tuesday the 30th, an out-of-town excursion is organized for Gibellina (71 km from Palermo), well-known for the monumental and rather brutal white concrete intervention by artist Alberto Burri (1981) made in the wake of a 1968 earthquake. During the final weekend, on Saturday 3 November and Sunday 4, the group will have the option of following Manifesta 12’s closing program. Two different schedules are expected to be proposed to the students. One is to be organized by Sasha Taormina, based in Palermo and dedicated primarily to the city and its cultural centers, galleries and museums; it will include a discussion of contemporary photography with Letizia Battaglia, famous for her depictions of the mafia in the years between 1974 and 1990 and active in politics and publishing. The second one will be conceived by Valentina Sansone, an art critic (Flash Art, Manifesto) and curator (collaborator with Salvatore Lacagnina at the Swiss Institute in Rome, Konstfack’s CuratorLab alumna and publication lecturer at Stockholm University, curatorial studies), as well as the artistic director of L’Ascensore, a shop-window space for contemporary art in Palermo founded in 2015. Sansone’s perspective will be centered on contemporary art and the cultural impact of Manifesta 12 on the site, but not only. Indeed, Sansone is curating one of the collateral events of the Manifesta 12: “Confiscated Properties: Architecture, Ideology, and Performance” in Brancaccio. The project re-thinks the role of properties seized from organized crime, in relation to the history of the city, the protagonists of the counterculture, together with the organizations and self-run groups in Palermo over the last 40 years. A series of preliminary events has accompanied the project since March 2017, and during their stay in Palermo, a group of MFA students will have the possibility to be part of a participative performance of The Great Learning Orchestra music collective (Stockholm) together with UK-based composers Tony Harris and Barry Russell, in a confiscated warehouse in Brancaccio. Closed for almost twenty years since the confiscation to the mafia, the space can offer a new facility of its neighborhood: a gym, and a center for creative activities.

PROGRAM #2: POOL SEMINAR – INTERSPECIES IN PALERMO
A second program is organized and led by Uriel Orlow, MFA faculty member and exhibiting artist at Manifesta 12. This week-long program takes its cue from the title of the biennial, The Planetary Garden which itself is borrowed from Gilles Clement's Planetary Garden with its vision of the planet as a trans-scalar garden marked by mutual care and co-responsibility of different forms of nature. From the vantage point of Palermo we will consider interspecies pasts and futures, and post-Anthropocene eras with new and different agencies including those of non-human actors – animals, the environment, plants, geological domains – which share the planet with human beings. We will look at the planetary garden of Palermo as a platform of different modes of co-existence. And we will explore – conceptually and practically – different strategies including Haraway's multi-species storytelling.
Starting with joint visits of the exhibitions and in depths discussion of key works which explore on interspecies relations, we will also visit sites throughout the city and meet various interlocutors such as assistant curators of Manifesta, the curator of the botanical garden in Palermo, instigators of a social gardening project in the city, eco-activists etc. These visits and encounters will form the basis of the group's own interaction with the city in order to develop a small project or intervention, collectively or individually which will be presented as part of the public program of Manifesta on interspecies between 2 – 4 November.

FURTHER OUTPUTS
The rented space MINIMUM will allow the MFA group to present to an audience in Palermo some spontaneous reflections and first intuitive ideas during the study trip itself. Furthermore, once back at the ZHdK, the students together with faculty members will be asked to prepare something for the Infotag on November 20, 2018, ideally a display/installation/exhibition. Finally, the MFA book 2019 will be a possible editorial platform to publish any kind of contribution, either text or visual.

FINANCIAL SUPPORT AND AGREEMENT WITH ZHDK FOR THE MFA STUDENTS
Following the ZHdK HSL policy (for study trips, half of the costs should be paid by the students), the plane tickets and their reservations will be made by the students themselves, and the organization and cost of accommodation will be covered by the ZHdK MFA. Furthermore, ZHdK MFA will also cover the costs of the various activities, such as transportation to Gibellina (by bus) and museum entries. NB: students have to pay their food and drinks.

LETTER OF MOTIVATION: DEADLINE SUNDAY 30th SEPTEMBER
Please send your letter of motivation by Sunday 30th September 2018 to uriel.orlow@zhdk.ch. Indicate briefly why you would like to take part to this study trip, what do you expect or wish from such a trip, which program you might want to join and how it relates to your artistic or theoretical practice, if you plan to visit Manifesta 12 beforehand as well as any other information or reflection that you find relevant to mention. Your text shouldn’t be longer than 6000 characters including spaces.
Your letter, that you should complement with a synthetic documentation of your last and most important projects, will be read and discussed by Uriel Orlow, Anne-Laure Franchette and Salvatore Vitale, these latter being two MA Fine Arts students actively engaged in the organization of this study trip since the very beginning. You will get an answer on Monday 8th of October.