SITE VISIT VII: Furkapass #THEHILLSAREALIVE 

SITE VISIT VII: #THEHILLSAREALIVE
in:dépendance Furkablick, Furkapass

16.7.2022, 12:00 - 18:00

Registration: info@nexpo.ch

12:00 Picnic on the Furka Pass
14:00 Performance "#THEHILLSAREALIVE" by Karl Holmqvist and opening of the exhibition «Exchanging Settings» by Azize Ferizi
15:00 Talk "What Stories Tell Stories" by Sara Sherif with Tatjana Blaser and Géraldine Recker

(From Zurich HB we offer a shuttle bus to the Furkapass: Outward journey 10:00 - 12:00, return journey 18:00 - 20:00).

In the high Furka zone lies the forgotten dépendence of the historic Hotel Furkablick. During the 1980s, the pass hotel became known for its numerous interventions by international cultural figures. In 1991, Rem Koolhaas converted the associated restaurant. Since then, however, the rugged landscape, which is only accessible in the summer months and disappears the rest of the time under a metre-high blanket of snow, has become quieter again. This summer, a new experiment is now taking shape at the top of the pass. A residency programme is dedicated to independent forms of living, teaching and working together in the previously abandoned Dépendence.

Based on the pass as a border zone, Sara Sherif's discussion round "What Stories Tell Stories" with Tatjana Blaser and Géraldine Recker is dedicated to negotiating questions of presence, memory, home and perception in a context of listening and being together. The artist and author thus follows on from her series of reports for NEXPO, in which she explores mental and geographical borders and questions of identity and self-exoticism through podcasts, narratives and photographs.

Referring to the conceptual and imaginative treatment of landscape in the artistic interventions of the 1980s/1990s, Karl Holmqvist develops a site-specific performance entitled #THEHILLSAREALIVE. Through it, the medium of poetry is carried to the top of the pass and the way language can occupy a space and, conversely, its content can be changed by the space, can be experienced by visitors.

NEXPO thinks differently because it seeks the new in the existing. Urban spaces in Switzerland have been built in many places, brownfields have become rare, spaces are being condensed. NEXPO therefore asks how the existing can meet new needs. How places can change and remain themselves. How what is there does not make room for something new, but becomes something new itself. NEXPO presents and stages places, creates thematic references and asks in which places coexistence can be promoted and how.