Enter the Crack

Enter The Crack aimed to appropriate a place that seemed simultaneously near and far, in order to unsettle dominant structures and create a moment of resistance. Central to the project was a sense of "discomfort that results from belonging to two different worlds, worlds so far separated from each other that they seem irreconcilable, and yet which coexist in everything that you are" as described by the sociologist and philosopher Didier Eribon in Returning to Reims. More concretely, the theme crystallised around the question of how an artistic search for traces between biographical fragments, political reality, and aesthetic staging opens up spaces and perspectives. In the course of this two-year artistic research process, various works were created with collaborators: among them Silvester Firefly with Nagi Gianni, Schattenlicht with Wassili Widmer, and Bluse with Laura Oertle and Marisa Sturzenegger-Mayer. The existing work Private Garden by Roman Gysin was further developed, and with Susan Steiger, masks were created from linen, wax, and acrylic through craft. In addition, objects and their contexts from the Collectio Magica et Occulta (CMO) collection of the Cantonal Library of Appenzell Ausserrhoden were incorporated into the project. With The Headgear, the research has manifested as a short film, to be carried forward.