FGA#38 What life could be

What life could be / The ambivalence of success is an oral history about place, living as an artist, being contemporaries and sharing a time frame with specific problems and enchantments. Photos, quotes, maps and documents, artists’ contributions and essays, are inserted into the flow of the conversations. Ten white pages are occupied by a scent.

In 2018 we started revisiting people, topics and places that featured in FGA’s 2008 The Swiss Issue, and soon focussed on cooperative forms of thinking, living and working together. Some good people in Zurich, Geneva and St-Imier, Glarus, Rolle, Biel and Tschlin, shared their knowledge and experiences about proposals and counter-proposals from ancient times, and from the 1920’s, 50’s, 70’s, 80’s and now.

The cities we live in are changing rapidly. Their proclaimed success excludes many from affordable space to live and work. What could life be and what can art contribute to that? “To survive as a singular artist, we must organise collectively”, Pascal Gielen said. In this issue SciFi author P.M. asks: “How would you really like to live? What do you really want to do? In what kind of society would you feel comfortable?”

FGA adds: What can spur and support the possibility of imagening, building and living such proposals, and keep them outside the market? One co-op law from the 1920’s is important, but Terrence McKenna sees the root of the matter underground, and suggests it is the largest rhizome of psychedelic mushrooms on earth that first sparked the collective imagination of what life could be.

14 conversations with:
Lisa Lee Benjamin, Frank Hyde-Antwi, Wenzel A. Haller, Felix Stephan Huber, Marco Jacomella, Claudia Jolles, Andreas Marti, Angela Marzullo and Michael Hofer, NORM, Jan van Oordt, Manuela Pfrunder, Curdin Tones, Eva Wagner, Hans Widmer aka P.M.

Image and text contributions:
Stefan Burger, Delphine Chapuis Schmitz, Hayat Erdogan, Tine Milz und Julia Reichert, Anne-Laure Franchette, Patrizia Mazzei und Andreas Marti, Haus am Gern, Michael Hiltbrunner, Marco Jacomella and Michele D’Ariano Simionato, Marta Margnetti and Giacomo Galletti, Pietro Mattioli, Jan van Oordt, Elodie Pong, Arthur de Pury, Boris Siemaszko and Melina Wilson, Curdin Tones, Micha Zweifel

Documents, fragments and quotes:
Søren Berner, Stefan Burger, CIRA, Ernst Gisel, Terrence Mc Kenna, Otto Mueller, Serge Stauffer, Marc Angélil and Arno Brandlhuber, Elinor Ostrom, Grundsätze Stadt Zürich, Magaly Tornay

Editors:
Robert Hamelijnck & Nienke Terpsma
Translations:
Mary Carozza (Ger-Eng), Emiliano Battista (Fr-Eng), Charlotte Eckler (Ger-Eng), Michael Meert (Fr-Eng)
English copy editing:
Liz Allan, Katherine McBride, Michael Meert
Proof reading:
Liz Allan, Katherine McBride, Charlotte Eckler
Design:
Nienke Terpsma, Rotterdam
Printed and bound in Germany by
Kösel GmbH, Altusried
Paperback, 360 pages, 72 img., 52 in colour, 17 facsimiles, 19 x 13 cm

Published by:
Edition Fink, Zürich
ISBN 978-3-03746-232-4
ISSN 1874-0227
©© January 2019 Fucking Good Art, authors and artists

Financial support:
Stadt Zürich Kultur
Kanton Zürich
Mondriaan Fund
FGA Supplementary Fund