Film Loretta Fahrenholz: HAUST, introduction by Jakob Schillinger

The moving image is the key medium of Kunsthalle Zürich’s upcoming shows by Loretta Fahrenholz and Pauline Boudry/Renate Lorenz. Key to the imagery of both exhibitions is the vivacious participation of its contributors, in both form and content. Our program of theory and education seeks to juxtapose those images on screen with the living bodies in the gallery space. Via various situations – such as film-screenings and introductions, performances, conversations with the artists, a reading group, kids workshops and guided walks – we hope to approximate diverse answers to some shared questions of the various works on show: Which ideas and practices of feminism are required by our contemporary societies? Which re-articulations might be necessary? How may artistic media and methodologies contribute to such potential re-definitions? And what are the political positions and activities to result, reclaim, remain?

Loretta Fahrenholz' experimental feature film Haust (2010, 71 min.) suggests artistic discourse as contained within personal intimacies and economic urgencies. It explores the margins of the professionalized art system – a position geographically, economically and critically distanced from the circulations of the art market, yet nonetheless one discursively and psychologically embedded in the compromised dynamics of the system.

Jakob Schillinger is an art historian and critic. Recent positions include: curator of Ludlow 38 in New York; Dean of the School for Worldly Companions at dOCUMENTA (13); curator of based in Berlin, a survey exhibition of emerging artists in Berlin in 2011; curator of Neue Kunst in Hamburg. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in art history at Princeton University. Schillinger is a frequent contributor to Artforum and has contributed to numerous exhibition catalogues and publications, including Flash Art International, Mousse, October, and Texte zur Kunst.