SITE VISIT I: Le Plaza

You are invited to the first SITE VISIT on 10 May, 5:30 p.m. in the former movie theatre of Le Plaza in Geneva. We travel through Switzerland as a collective, we visit future venues and we invite you to join us in defining the vision of the NEXPO.

SITE VISIT I
Le Plaza, Geneva
10 May 2021, 5:30 – 7 p.m.

Recording of the event

Current tendencies like digitization and the consequences of the pandemic challenge what it means to live together. The death of retail, the “Retail Apocalypse”, has eliminated the central marketplace as the site of public and social life. How can we find a new approach to the leftovers of urban life? We start by taking a look at a potential venue for the future NEXPO: Le Plaza, an abandoned movie theatre in Geneva, a modernist ruin of fiction and fantasy. We debate its resurrection as a beacon for new visions in urban space. What can we learn from this supposedly obsolete location that was once and perhaps still is a model of a meeting place? And we ask ourselves how architecture and the city respond to ever-invasive virtual tendencies that are undermining the existence of our built reality?

Our guests:

Arno Brandlhuber and Olaf Grawert (architect, La Biennale di Venezia Architettura, German Pavilion)
Samia Henni (architecture historian, Cornell University)
Corine Mauch (mayor of Zurich)
Ottolinger – Christa Bösch and Cosima Gadient (fashion designers)
Adam Szymczyk (curator / Documenta 14)

Words of greeting by Sami Kanaan (mayor of Geneva) and Grégoire Junod (mayor of Lausanne), moderated by Fredi Fischli, Niels Olsen and Philip Ursprung (art and architecture historian, ETH Zurich)

In conjunction with SITE VISIT I, Swiss artist Mathilde Agius will create an artistic portrait of Le Plaza in the form of a series of photographs. Her work introduces the modernist ruin in Geneva as the landmark of the NEXPO.

Filmmaker Eva Zornio documents the Le Plaza

About SITE VISIT: The new series of excursions and discussions is an extension of NEXPO’s research into what it means to live and be together in 21^st-century Switzerland. Rapid social change is not only a matter of technological progress; it also compels us to think about our built environs. SITE VISIT is an attempt to playfully revisit spaces that have become obsolete through cultural and economic change. Unoccupied buildings give us cause to think about the future of public life. The event is a first step made by the artistic and administrative directors of the NEXPO: Fredi Fischli, Niels Olsen and Christina Hanke.

About the NEXPO: The ten largest cities of Switzerland have initiated a new national exhibition called NEXPO – the new Expo. It is new because it will take unprecedented shape: It will be sustainable, future oriented and decentralized, taking place all over Switzerland. There will be no defined, fenced-in location. It will interconnect cultural initiatives throughout Switzerland – in all linguistic regions, in cities, agglomerations, and rural areas. It will build bridges between centre and periphery, it will establish a Swiss-wide network and it will create new places to meet and gather.