Jacob Dwyer (UK), Thomas Flechtner (CH),
Daniel Karrer (CH), Silvia Studerus (CH)
Daniel Vorthuys (NL)

31.01.–02.02.2020
Haus Dahinden, Kienastenwiesweg 41, 8053 Zürich

«There’s the doughnut and there’s the hole. And you should keep your eye on the doughnut, and all the other things that go on they don’t matter. What matters is falling in love with the story or ideas and realizing those. There’s things going on in the world all the time and some people become obsessed with those, but it’s a little bit absurd, and so your job is to stay focussed and hope that the ideas keep coming and your you’re able to realize them. Just keep your eye on the doughnut, the hole is so deep and so bad. The doughnut is a beautiful thing.» — David Lynch

The quote from David Lynch is dedicated above all to the source of inspiration. Focussed on the thing itself, and not on what surrounds it. Concentrating on the essentials and leaving space for one’s own thoughts are the key to creativity and authenticity.
Every focus has a stasis within, which must be overcome. Thus the disruptive energies of the doughnut lie in a confrontation with all the different qualities or aggregate conditions of the act of focussing.

Disruption, derived from the Latin verb disrumpere, stands on the one hand for discontinuity, disturbance, rupture, disorder or destruction but also, on the other, for revolutionary social change and innovation. The contrary meanings of this term, chosen in 2015 as worst word of the year, are what interests us.
Nowadays everyone thinks that without disruptive ideas they are no longer able to exist. The atmosphere in which society finds itself ranges from melancholy and uncertainty to euphoria and enthusiasm.
In the exhibition, we literally encounter the doughnut and focus our attention on artists who are unwaveringly focussed in their work.
The exhibition brings together works and performative processes into a three-day snapshot. This stands in a dialogue with the residential house built by the Zurich architect Justus Dahinden.


Ceremony of Disruption
with Silvia Studerus

The Basel artist Silvia Studerus has for some years concerned herself with alter­na­tive therapeutic approaches, which have become integrated into her artistic work. On Sunday she will conduct a Cacao cere­mony, as a performative contribution to the exhibition. The ceremony will take place within a closed group. Please regis­ter by 26 January. Places are limited.

Cacao Ceremony — raw cacao is considered to have healing properties and to heighten awareness. These are thought to pro­mote creativity, receptiveness and physical resil­ience. In the group, ceremonial cacao will be drunk, ac­com­panied by meditation and energy work, sound and the aromas of liquid smoke.
“Participants will be able to focus on the inner essence and gain an awareness of the world and its interconnections. A chance to transform what has become obsolete in order to live the now with new strength and joy” — Silvia Studerus.
The high-grade cacao comes from Costa Rica, is produced under traditional and sustainable con­di­tions, and is distinguished by its pure unpro­cessed quality. As preparation, a light breakfast is recom­men­ded to enable participation in the ceremony on a not completely empty stomach. Personal or gene­ral requests and questions are very welcome.

During the ceremony, visiting the exhi­bition will not be possible.


Performance ¿edulerp
with Daniel Vorthuys

Daniel Vorthuys will perform from a malfunct script. A made-up character is derived from the magic of the dressing room where a lot–though not all–of theater begins. In this liminal space, love, hope, fear, terror, dread, a sense of hazard, are held by the very live possibilities of failure in translation. The performance offers some possibilities of outcomes–the has-been’s and could-have’s, or might-be’s–before and during the process of theatricalization has occured within the interior’s mise-en-scène.

We heartily thank our hosts Dorothee Messmer, director of the Kunstmuseum Olten and Marco Bakker, architect and co-founder Bakker Blanc architects Lausanne who make this event possible.

Jacob Dwyer is an artist and writer from London (UK) based in Amsterdam (NL). He has completed a masters in Experimental Film at Kingston Uni­ver­sity and a residency at De Ateliers. His work moves between film, video, audio and writing. He creates characters who harness the position of the outsider.

Thomas Flechtner is an artist based in Valliére (F) and Zurich (CH). He focuses on both expansive textures and the little details that catch the viewer‘s eye, creating fascinating large-format images built on rhythms defined by colour and form. His work is imbued with a sense of time­lessness.

Daniel Karrer is a painter based in Basel (CH). Between the realm of digital imagery and the pictorial traditions of the past centuries, Karrer’s paintings reflect the current visual memory. This memory is shaped both by past pictorial concep­tions and by the current visual aesthetics, which struggle, among visual aspects, with the contra­dictions of a medium that simultaneously offers infinite dimensions and unavoidable flatness.

Silvia Studerus is an artist based in Basel (CH). She has earned a bachelor in Visual Arts and a training in energetic healing. Her work ranges from performance and spatial interventions to healing processes and contemporary shamanism. Among other things Silvia offers cacao ceremonies (Cacao — The Mayan Food of the Gods. The Food for the Shift.) for interested people.

Daniel Vorthuys is a poet based in Amsterdam (NL). His work explores the heritage of the western classical tradition through its stories of meta­mor­phosis, transforming this tradition into a mythology of alien and unstable subject-hood. His writing is geared towards performance and video introducing elements of music and costume.

Herrmann Germann Conspirators is a Zurich (CH) based initiative, founded in 2011 as Herrmann Germann Contemporary by Stefanie Herrmann and Tomas Germann, working with emerging and estab­lished, national and international contem­po­rary artists.