FGA#20, the Swiss Issue—a field study on art & market, or the ambivalence of success, was made in 2008, the year of the financial crisis. It appeared in a domestic and an export version and was co-published with edition fink and episode publishers.
Now, 10 years later in 2018, we are back in Switzerland, revisiting many of the people, topics, and places starring in a new Swiss Issue, supported by Stadt Zürich Kultur and to be published with edition fink in November this year.
Time goes fast—and slow at the same time. In the last ten years some glaciers have changed more than some people have. The bank secret changed, the banknotes changed, opening hours of the supermarket changed, leisure and working hours shifted, art initiatives turned into institutes, museums into event halls, schools into educational multiplexes, factories into Kunsthalles and cheap studios, cheap studios into high-end apartments, and office space—well, into pretty much everything.
How is everyone doing nowadays? What is aging? What are the long lines in and through time? Are new institutes made of bits of old ones? What can we learn from long-standing artist/curator-run and institutional structures? What about the many coops and Genossenschaften for living and working?
FGA focusses on the local, or rather: starts from a local situation. In this case, Zurich and Switzerland are our temporary home-base, a microcosm where larger general issues play out in specific ways.
