Aric Chen Kashef Chowdhury Claudia Comte Bice Curiger Rem Koolhaas Niklas Maak Mai-Thu Perret Emily Segal Pacôme Thiellement Philip Ursprung Adrián Villar Rojas
ABOUT E.A.T. Since almost ten years the E.A.T. / Engadin Art Talks organizes a yearly forum of art, architecture, design, literature and innovation in Zuoz, Engadin. It is earning its reputation as an important cuttingedge cultural event, attracting numerous national and international guests who come to share their passion and knowledge. Since its beginning E.A.T. has featured more than 100 international artists, architects, film-makers, writers and designers. E.A.T.’s aim is to facilitate a dialogue between thought leaders and culture enthusiasts and, in this way, perpetuate the history of the Engadin as a place of intensive creative activity and discourse. It does this through offering a platform for exchange, making a valuable contribution to the Engadin’s history whilst creating something new and unique. Besides the yearly forum in Zuoz, E.A.T. is presenting a series of talks throughout the year in Zurich under the umbrella of E.A.T. × Zurich. The E.A.T. 2018 are curated by internationally renowned curators: – DANIEL BAUMANN Artistic Director, Kunsthalle Zürich, – BICE CURIGER Artistic Director Fondation Van Gogh Arles – HANS ULRICH OBRIST Artistic Director Serpentine Galleries London – PHILIP URSPRUNG Professor for History of Art & Architecture, and Dean of the Department of Architecture ETH Zurich
Clockwise from upper left: HANS ULRICH OBRIST, Artistic Director Serpentine Gallery London and CRISTINA BECHTLER, Co-Founder Engadin Art Talks DANIEL BAUMANN, Director Kunsthalle Zürich PHILIP URSPRUNG, Professor for History of Art & Architecture, and Dean of the Department of Architecture ETH Zurich and BICE CURIGER, Artistic Director Fondation Van Gogh Arles
WELCOME to E.A.T. / Engadin Art Talks The E.A.T. / Engadin Art Talks are kick starting the international art year this January with SIDE COUNTRY SIDE. More than half of mankind is now urban, the other half is not. While the topic of urbanisation has been widely and hotly debated for decades, the ‘countryside’, that is the landscape, has attracted little or no attention. And yet it is subject to equally radical changes, which have often taken place entirely under the radar. For this reason, this seemingly unknown territory is the focus of the E.A.T. 2018, this is what we want to explore. SIDE COUNTRY SIDE traces an arc from legendary land art projects, mega structures and urban agglomerations to museums in remote regions; phenomena such as the flight from country to city, robots in the landscape, the depiction of country life in literature, contemporary landscape architecture, and the gentrification of the landscape and its inhabitants will be discussed. In this year’s E.A.T. artists, architects, writers and curators from all over the world will explore the potential of the countryside as a source of inspiration. GET INSPIRED ! Cristina Bechtler Katharina De Vaivre Co-Founder E.A.T. Managing Director E.A.T.
REM KOOLHAAS Architect, OMA, Netherlands
Rem Koolhaas sees the future in the countryside It is time to learn from the radical change happening beyond the world’s cities, suggests Rem Koolhaas, architect and co-founder of OMA
The modern world is preoccupied with cities. More than half of mankind is now urban, which has been the pretext for an almost exclusive focus on the city. They are seen as the engines of economy, of emancipation, of the ultimate “lifestyle”. Since “Delirious New York” (1978), I have probably been associated as much as anyone with this concentration on the city, on the metropolis, on urbanism. But in 2018 I will be researching everything that is not the city to prepare an exhibition in a major (spiral-shaped) venue in Manhattan. Today there is an almost complete lack of exploration of the countryside. Yet if you look carefully, the countryside is changing much more rapidly and radically than the “city”, which in many ways remains an ancient form of coexistence. I first realised this in a Swiss village in the Engadin, which I visited often over the past 25 years. I began to notice drastic changes there. The village was simultaneously growing and hollowing out. A man I assumed was a farmer turned out to be a dissatisfied nuclear scientist from Frankfurt. Cows disappeared, along with their smell, and in came minimalist renovations, abundant cushions absorbing their new owners’ urban angst. Farming itself was now left to Sri Lankan workers. And nannies, nurses and assistants recruited in Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines were now looking after the homes,
kids and pets of the virtual, one-week-a-year population who had caused the village to expand. This was the trigger for a bigger exploration of the countryside globally. It has led to a realisation that, in order to feed, maintain and entertain ever-growing cities, the countryside is becoming a colossal back-of-house, organised with relentless Cartesian rigour. That system, not always pleasant, is proliferating on an unprecedented scale. The resulting transformation is radical and ubiquitous, and manifests itself in different ways around the world. In America, for example, a zone runs through the middle of the country where satellite information has a direct impact on agriculture. Deep knowledge of every square inch of the earth is transmitted to the laptop of the farmer. The laptop is the new ground. From the laptop, the farmer feeds the data to a robotised tractor. Each season, an armada of sophisticated harvesters so big and expensive that they need to be shared and work 24 hours a day, operates almost like a military campaign, moving slowly from south to north as the temperature increases to create a linear tabula rasa, dividing America in two halves. Russia offers a different example. With the embrace of the market economy, only a fraction of Aeroflot’s once-extensive network of air routes remains. Cities that were once connected are now condemned to return to the 19th century and have to find new purposes. The results surprised. Sometimes it has led to an increased sense of serenity: making the best of an involuntary off-grid condition, a proliferation of museums, where every provincial knick-knack is valued. Superimposed on all this is the impact of global warming: melting permafrost in the north, destroying structures and infrastructure, with new territories becoming suitable for agriculture and shifting a large area of farming to the north.
Other examples of the countryside’s transformation range from the opportunities in Germany to channel refugees to revive moribund, half-abandoned regions to the impact of Chinese railways that transform the heart of Africa. Then there are the sweeping effects of grand political redesign, not just under dictators such as Stalin and Mao but also under the European Union’s common agricultural policy. In short, for better or worse (often both) the countryside has been completely involved in modernisation, on a global scale.
Architects, look and learn As an architect, I am fascinated by the physical effects of Silicon Valley’s virtual propaganda. A new scale is emerging in data centres and distribution centres. Buildings are becoming bigger and bigger, the largest so far being Tesla’s battery-making Gigafactory near Reno, Nevada. As they are increasingly automated and robotised, none of these buildings has large human populations. The human scale could become irrelevant. In some of today’s giant greenhouses light is not admitted for the pleasure of humans but reduced to that narrow part of the spectrum that promotes growth in plants. It is a return to extreme functionality. Given the massive building in the countryside and the reduction of human presence, architecture can become more radical. Today, humans need the colour beige: we cannot stand stark contrast or colour intensity. In the new technological spaces, however, you get a shock of intensity. Coding is creating its own aesthetic. We are witnessing the emergence of a new sublime. And this will have repercussions not only for architecture but also for citizens more broadly. It has a beauty that is in itself really amazing.
Source: “Rem Koolhaas sees the future in the countryside” published by The World in 2018, The Economist.
“ The Consciousness of Place ” KASHEF CHOWDHURY Architect, URBANA, Bangladesh Whatever our invention or intervention, our engagements with Place hardly ever end in concord. Only if we were to slow down and listen into its deep silence, could we hear of the memories and wishes of a place.
The Luxury Of Light And Shadows The Friendship Centre, Gaibandha, Bangladesh
© Anup Basak
Nestled in the flatlands of rural Bangladesh near the River Brahma-Jamuna, coursing down from Tibet, flush with the silts and melted snows of the Himalayas, the Friendship Centre is one of those new buildings which feels as though it may have been there for a very long time. Whilst the simple, graphic forms of its brick construction present a slightly archaic aspect, its enclosure by a bund or embankment lends the whole site an inwardlooking inverted feel, almost like an excavation. This sense of history and rootedness is a central one in the work of the Centre’s architect Kashef Mahboob Chowdhury and his practice URBANA, with its forms and plan drawing on influences from Louis Kahn to Buddhist monasteries. We asked him about the project and its genesis. The project has a pretty unique brief. How did it come about? – The client, Friendship, is an NGO that works with those living in the remote riverine islands of the region. Their programmes, including health, education, capacity building and women empowerment, are targeted at some of the poorest people in the country. They had this idea for a centre which could be used for training sessions, classes and meetings and also as a facility they could rent out as an income generator. We wanted to take this idea further and truly create a centre, around which the activities of this wonderful organisation would
revolve, but that could also serve as a place which brings people together. In this way, the architecture needed to be simple and bare: a response to the economy of the region, and with a quality of calmness and serenity that echoes the nature of its riverine landscape setting. The building’s immediately distinctive feature is its surrounding bund, which provides flood protection. What were the factors – environmental or budgetary – in the decision to use this? Does it have local precedent? – Bunds are not uncommon in the region but they are constructed for protection of large areas or entire districts as opposed to a single complex. The client’s brief was quite extensive but the budget they had was very low. So after coming up with a design, our estimates showed we were spending three quarters of the budget on earth fill, foundations and the structure needed to raise the entire complex by eight feet – above the highest recorded floods. Therefore in the final design, we decided to build directly on the existing land itself, with the complex protected by an embankment, which could be constructed and maintained at a fraction of the cost of the original plan to raise the whole building. Louis Kahn, whose work I know you admire, talked of an “architecture of the land”. This building appears literally to be that – almost like an excavation because of the surrounding bund. Could you comment on the importance you see in rooting a building in its context? – In Bengal, land is referred to as ‚Ma‘ or mother and a deep emotional relationship can be felt between the land and its people. But there exists other clues elsewhere: the French have a word ‚immeuble‘ which as an adjective which means immovable. But as a noun, it means building. Now, there lies the true nature of architecture, that is, if architecture is an art, it is an immovable art. Therefore unlike other art forms, like painting or film, architecture is forever married to the place where it is located: to its climate, its flora and fauna. And to its people. In my work I know of no greater need than to ‚root‘ an architecture and let it ‚grow‘, or merge and settle in its context. Because of the bund, the building’s plan seems to function more like that of a walled town – looking inwards with its outdoor spaces as a series of courts. Knowing your work draws on history and precedent, I was wondering if you could talk about the models you looked in developing this layout. – Two thousand years ago, this region was predominantly Buddhist and therefore it has many ruins of Buddhist monasteries, which influenced the design. I have always been fascinated by
ruins, including the image in my mind of Kahn’s National Building in Dhaka, work on which remained abandoned for many years. For a child growing up and passing by that construction site everyday, it was the most beautiful of all ruins. And like those of ruins everywhere, I decided to ‚fracture‘ the forms and spaces, making them more breathable while still holding on to the visually heavy brick volumes of the remains of the monasteries. Additionally, the life and economy of the people of the islands seemed as monastic as is possible outside of a religious monastic life. I looked to reflect that through the materials and treatment of the architecture in general. The Centre accommodates both a more public working and training side and a more private residential side. How important in the brief was creating a sense of community and a sense of place? Can you engender this through your architecture? – The brief required residential facilities as training is often conducted over a period of a week or more. We also realised that the Centre needed to have enough space to provide areas for interaction or private moments for its residents, obviating the need for them to leave the complex too often for a ‚breather‘. We also felt there needed to be a sufficient variety and layering of spaces, which would allow for chance and discovery during someone’s stay in the Centre. There is no air-conditioning: the series of open pavilions and pools you’ve designed provide natural cooling. How crucial do you feel it is to respond to the requirements of the local climate through material and design rather than through technology? – Situatedness and context is the essence of the value and rationale of my architecture. Nothing, including technology, is outside of this appraisal, but they are governed by context, both human and natural. Human context in turn encompasses all of man’s learning and aspirations, from history and philosophy to art and politics. The building has a very elemental feel in its forms, construction and use of raw brick. Could you comment on this quality in the architecture? – The bare and the essential are at the core of a monastic life but also in the nature of the lives of the people for whom the Centre is built. It serves and brings together some of the poorest of the poor in the country, yet within the extreme limitation of means, there was a search for the luxury of light and shadows, of the economy and generosity of small spaces, and of the joy of movement and discovery. Source: Interview with Rob Wilson for the UNCUBE Magazine, 07, Feb 2013
Claudia Comte Artist, Switzerland “ From Grancy to Jayapura ” Claudia Comte’s creativity as a child was galvanised by the countryside around Grancy where she grew up in, in Switzerland. There, a reverence for the idyllic, unspoilt, remoteness of the Swiss forest steered her later as an adult to travel to some of the most remote sanctuaries on the planet and transformed her love of nature into a career as an artist. In her travelogue for E.A.T. Comte will discuss the impact the forest and its ecology had on her as a kid, as well as the fantasy worlds of cartoons which she would absorb in her daily practise to combat small village boredom when it was incumbent. Cartoons and the Countryside will be the departure point into discussing divergent themes and asides in relation to her travels, artworks and interests in ecology and the economy of minimalist aesthetics.
Where is your favourite Countryside? And why? – The countryside where I grew up in, at the foot of the Jura in the Canton of Vaud. Picabia said it most accurately. “Pour que vous aimiez quelque chose il faut que vous l’ayez vu et entendu depuis longtemps tas d’idiots”, in short we love what we know and understand. Tell us about a strong memory / experience you had in the Countryside. – The time, as a small girl, when I was fetching fresh milk at my village’s creamery, I was on my roller-skates and a tractor almost ran me over. Besides this moment of life vs. death, a most memorable time was going to all the country-side festivals, such as the “Girons” and the “Abbayes” It’s where everyone comes together, men, women and children who contribute to creating a special and entertaining time. On a family level, I enjoy remembering, our Sunday walk in the surrounding fields and forests, somewhat of a tradition in Swiss households. What do you consider your greatest achievement? – Getting out of that very countryside I just described. Who is your hero? – Jane Goodall, Regina Frey and Paul Nicklen. Either primatologist, anthropologist or biologist, all three work extensively on conservation and animal welfare issues. They actively render humans aware of endangered environmental and animal habitats. Your motto? – Don’t give me time, give me a deadline. What is your unrealized project? – How to converge ecological concerns and artistic endeavour into one synergising experience. I am working on it.
BICE CURIGER Artistic Director, Fondation Vincent Van Gogh Arles “ OFF CENTRE The eventful awakening based on the example of Arles ” Vincent van Gogh left Paris and went on to experience his most important period as an artist within just fifteen months in Arles. Since 2014 Bice Curiger has been juxtaposing his works with advanced contemporary art in a newly established Foundation in Arles. The project is part of a major initiative currently taking place in this small town in conjunction with the opening of a cultural centre designed by Frank Gehry and envisioned by the Fondation LUMA.
ARIC CHEN Curator M+, Hong Kong
“ Fear and Love in the Countryside ”
Where is your favourite Countryside? And why? – I suppose I appreciate more the diversity of countrysides than any countryside in particular.
The countryside, as an idyllic construct, is no longer useful at a time when technology, demographics, and the relentlessness of human activity and expansion have made it increasingly difficult to distinguish between urban and rural, and even nature and artifice. Perhaps counter intuitively, the urbanization of our planet is only increasing pressure on the countryside, as the latter becomes ever more subservient to the political, economic, and lifestyle needs of the city. Should we fear our love of the countryside?
Tell us about a strong memory / experience you had in the Countryside – Over the recent holiday, my better half and I planned to go to Tibet. But being a US citizen and a native of the “restive” Chinese region of Xinjiang, the formalities got too complicated. And so we opted instead for the Tibetan part of Sichuan province, and it was spectacular. What do you consider your greatest achievement? – Still working on it. Who is your hero? – At the moment, it’s Xuanzang, the 7th century monk who made the perilous journey to India in order to bring Buddhist texts back to China. But most of all, he bravely did it without the Emperor’s permission. Your motto? – One day at a time. What is your unrealized project? – M+
ADRIAN VILLAR ROJAS Artist, Argentina
Where is your favourite Countryside? And why? – The concept of countryside is for me something really hard to hold in mind as a way to express a territorial space ruled more by nature than by human beings. In Argentina, for instance, countryside means agrotoxic-based hyper-production of seventy million tons of soya a year, which is exported to China to feed millions of pigs that are the main protein to ensure the Chinese labour-force development. China is the gigantic economy that, on one side, is absorbing the heaviest global costs of the worldwide industrial contamination allowing the West to keep their environment – including their beautiful countryside – clean, and, on the other side, is providing the cheapest industrial workers – and thus the cheapest industrial production, and thus the cheapest technology – in the history of capitalism. Every time someone looks at their five-hundred-dollar IPhone screen should at least be aware of how that amazingly convenient price has been reached: by hyper-contaminating and hyper-exploiting Argentine and Chinese countryside, Chinese pigs, and Chinese workers. So, the English word countryside is for me everything that surrounds Rosario, my home city in the middle of the agricultural hinterland in Argentina: a huge country specialized in intensive and extensive agriculture where seeds are genetically improved by Monsanto to be more resistant to the glyphosate – also developed by Monsanto – spread by planes over
millions of acres of land, and over hundreds of thousands of Argentine citizens that live in small countryside cities, towns and villages, producing mortal diseases such as cancer and genetic damage in the population. This is, no doubt, my favourite countryside: Argentine humid pampas. I know the idea of countryside does not necessarily imply absence of human planification of space, but rather one where cement, cars and humans are not the ruling elements of the landscape, allowing vegetation and other animals to cope with the space until fitting our idea of ‘nature.’ Therefore, it is hard to find a more anthropogenic or anthropomorphic word. There is no ‘nature’ at all as an autonomous entity. There is no ‘nature’ as a thing detached from humans. That´s why I think we have a fetichist, reifying, schizoid-psychotic, relationship with this signifier. We need it to detach ourselves from any other living or nonliving entity inside our own symbolic web. What for? Simply to have a total control of entities, including – as we can see with the Chinese workers’ example – humans themselves. It is the unstoppable technological domination of the globe, pure human instinct, no difference with any other species that ruled the planet. Tell us about a strong memory / experience you had in the Countryside – From a geo-political and world system perspective, Argentina – since its constitution as a republic
independent from the Spanish Royal Crown – has been positioned by the economic colonial and neocolonial structures in a countryside region. Once Latin America was run out of gold and silver, it was chosen and designed as the countryside of the planet, whose structural function would be – and continue to be – to provide food, minerals and oil. Mexico and Brazil can also provide workers, but this is nothing compared to the role played in terms of labor force by the Southern East. So, my strongest experience in the countryside has been each and every day of my first twenty nine years, spent ninety nine percent between Rosario and Buenos Aires. What do you consider your greatest achievement? – To be free enough so as to choose to live and work in my parent’s home in Rosario, every time I’m back in Argentina. I love to be writing this interview in the same desk where I studied for exams from elementary school to university, in the same room where I played with my brother during childhood, where I spent time with friends during teenagehood, where I had so many conversations with my mom, next to the small backyard where my dad made so many “asados” (barbecues).
There are so many layers of life, emotions and thought here. I definitely regard this place as my existential bunker, and being today thinking of the world from here as my greatest achievement. Who is your hero? – I lost interest in my heroes. Your motto? – Do not retreat, do not surrender. What is your unrealized project? – I have this project for a movie starring Steven Seagal that can never start shooting because all the extras that Steven has to kill according to the script refuse to be murdered and subsequently begin a sort of “extra” resistance by fleeing into the movie set. They hide there for decades by building underground tunnels similar to the Vietnamese ones, with meeting rooms, kitchens, hospitals, and so on, where they try to lead a normal life, including forming families and raising their children. Steven spends the rest of his life – and eventually gets very, very old – chasing the extras for a movie that cannot begin until there’s someone to get killed by him.
“ The Battle for Intimacy ” An analysis on the interplay of fiction, history, and memory on our fetishist, reifying, schizoid-psychotic, relationship with the concept of nature.
Mi familia muerta (My Dead Family), 2010; San Juan, Argentina; Courtesy the artist; Photo: Alan Legal
NIKLAS MAAK Journalist and Architecture Critic, Germany
“ What is Countryside Futurism? ” A journey to the countryside has often been misunderstood as an act of de-politicization or a retreat into the private and nostalgic. This has always been wrong. Anyone who has laid eyes on the futuristic paintings of Benedetta Cappa or John Berger’s books, like A Seventh Man, knows that the country can also be a respite from the slowness, torpor and museum-like atmosphere of the city. This talk will investigate the radical potential of the countryside at a moment where the urban aesthetic augurs an end and the cities’ traditional promise of self-determination and freedom is gone. The countryside will face massive challenges: rural areas will be affected by massive job losses due
to automatization, E-Commerce, computed farming etc. But what if we consider the loss of wage labor not only as a disaster, but as a chance? For ages, thinkers, architects and artists like like Constant Nieuwenhuys have dreamt of a society without work. Is it possible that for the first time in history, robotization can help produce a surplus that could finance an Unconditional Basic Income for the people – and turn the countryside into a playground for Constant’s “Homo Ludens”, a space of experimentation and freedom, of acceleration and resistance to the overly controlled, securitydriven, work-obessed, socially and aesthetically immobilized cities?
PACÔME THIELLEMENT Writer and Filmmaker, France “A bit of nostalgia for the old folks: You can’t go home again (Twin Peaks, Mani, Nature)”
MAI-THU PERRET Artist, Switzerland
Where is your favourite Countryside? And why? – There are too many to pick one, but I do love the rolling hills of the Tuscan countryside. There is nothing wild about this landscape, it’s been completely shaped and transformed by human hands, over thousands of years, giving it a very moving beauty. Tell us about a strong memory / experience you had in the Countryside. – I have very strong memories of riding alone in the countryside around Geneva as a child, cantering uphill in freshly cut fields at the end of summer, and playing in the river afterwards with horse and dog. Very strong, joyful freedom. What do you consider your greatest achievement? – I’m not sure I can answer this question. Who is your hero? – I don’t believe in heroes, but I’ve been rereading the work of Emily Dickinson lately, and she was incredible.
“ No More City ” A talk about the impulse to rural retreat and utopian communities
Where is your favorite Countryside? And why? – I love Ile-de-France (Compiègne, Pierrefonds, etc.) because of its dream-like quality. The trees floats like music. It is haunted by the Nerval poetry. Tell us about a strong memory / experience you had in the Countryside. – Pierrefonds. Walking through the village then going to the famous castle at night, when everything is closed and people are sleeping. Hearing a strange voice, slow, smooth, then realising it was a scout talking to other scouts. What do you consider your greatest achievement? – I have no idea. This is a very strange question. I am happy of having befriended people I admire.
Your motto? – I don’t have one, but to borrow from Dickinson: Tell all all the truth, but tell it slant – / Success in Circuit lies / Too bright for our infirm Delight / The Truth’s superb surprise / As Lightning to the Children eased / With explanation kind / The Truth must dazzle gradually / Or every man be blind – What is your unrealized project? – Leaving the city to take care of my garden and write a novel?
I am happy that old friends still like me. Friendship and Love are the only visible achievements. Then there is writing, or art, but there is no achievement in that, only searching without end. Who is your hero? – In art: Frank Zappa. In mysticism: Mani. Your motto? – I don’t have any. But I repeat myself (when facing the absurdity of the world): people have their reasons. Don’t take things personally. What is your unrealized project? – A book of Les Illuminations by Arthur Rimbaud. And maybe a book called Serpent too.
PHILIP USPRUNG Professor for History of Art & Architecture, and Dean of the Department of Architecture ETH Zurich, Switzerland Where is your favourite Countryside? And why? – In the Jura. It is wide open. You can see the earth’s history. It eludes national definitions. Tell us about a strong memory/experience you had in the Countryside. – Last fall, I walked with a group of my students and ten donkeys during three days through the Tabernas Desert in Spain. We walked along dry river beds, the sun was hot, we met abandoned mines and encountered one water source.
“ Earth Art: Between the Human and the Non-human ” In his poem To Posteriority, published in 1939, shortly before the beginning of the Second World War, Berthold Brecht wrote: “Ah, what an age it is / When to speak of trees is almost a crime / For it is a kind of silence about injustice!” Today, the situation is different. Today, it is almost a crime not to speak of trees, when addressing political issues. The paper will address the changed conception of nature, landscape and countryside and outline consequences for the domain of architecture.
What do you consider your greatest achievement? – My daughter and my son. Who is your hero? – Martin Luther King. Your motto? – “Where there is danger, the rescue grows as well.” (Hölderlin). What is your unrealized project? – A book on the countryside.
EMILY SEGAL Artist, Writer, and Strategist USA
Where is your favorite Countryside? And why? – BERKSHIRES USA Tell us about a strong memory / experience you had in the Countryside. – CHILDHOOD What do you consider your greatest achievement? – FRIENDSHIPS ho is your hero? W – GOD Your motto? – BUSINESS IN THE FRONT PARTY IN THE BACK What is your unrealized project? – MY NOVEL
NOT VITAL in Stalla until 3rd march 2018 Spread over three floors and reaching into the outside space, Stalla Madulain shows central, personal and site-specific work by Vital. During the conception of the exhibition, Not was several times in Madulain and, with a great sense of interior and exterior space, he created the sitespecific works especially for Stalla Madulain. The result is an emotional and personal exhibition, which is a symbol of Vital’s sensitivity to the architectural and natural space. OPENING HOURS DURING ENGADIN ART TALKS 27./28.1.2018, 16.00–18.00 Uhr STALLA MADULAIN Via Principela 15, 7523 Madulain
SAVE THE DATE BOOK LAUNCH “THE PRIVATE MUSEUM OF THE FUTURE” Edited by Cristina Bechtler and Dora Imhof Spring 2018 PRIVATE MUSEUM CONFERENCE 15. Juni 2018 Volkshaus Basel
SOMEWHERE TOTALLY ELSE A Globalized Mapping of the 2010s BOOKLAUNCH In collaboration with Engadin Art Talks Saturday, January 27, at 6 pm Halle am Plazzet, Dorfplatz, Zuoz Finn Canonica and Hans Ulrich Obrist
EDITED BY Cristina Bechtler, Katharina De Vaivre, Patricia Mosquera GRAPHIC DESIGN Atelier Landolt / Pfister
SIDE COUNTRY SIDE Casting something aside, passing something by and observing it from the corner of one’s eye: the two-day E.A.T. forum places the landscape and rural life at the centre of consideration. Do they not embody everything that our thoroughly urbanized culture has conserved as a projection screen? Are they not a source of romanticisation, on the one hand, in that they stand for the ‘authentic’, for nature per se? But do they not also stand for ideas and clichés about backwardness, stagnancy and abandonment, for feelings of being passed over and missing out? Or are we on the threshold of a crucial rethink? SIDE COUNTRY SIDE is a two-day symposium focusing on the wide-ranging claims and simultaneous co-responsibility of urban dwellers toward everything “that is not city, metropolis, industrial zone” – as one definition of ‘country’ has it. by Bice Curiger
SHORT PROGRAMME E.A.T. 2018 Hall at Plazzet SATURDAY, 27 JANUARY 10.00 Ramun Ratti, Cristina Bechtler, Philip Ursprung 10.15 Philip Ursprung 10.45 Kashef Chowdhury 11.45 Claudia Comte 12.15 Aric Chen 15.00 Adrián Villar Rojas 15.30 Bice Curiger 16.30 Pacôme Thiellement 17.00 Mai-Thu Perret 17.30 Book launch: Somewhere Totally Else SUNDAY, 28 JANUARY 10.30 Rem Koolhaas, Emily Segal and Niklas Maak in conversation – moderated by Hans Ulrich Obrist 12.00 Wrap Up
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COPYRIGHTS ARIC CHEN Image: Courtesy of Aric Chen; KASHEF CHOWDHURY Image: Courtesy of Kashef Chowdhury; CLAUDIA COMTE Image: Courtesy of Claudia Comte / Photography: Gunnar Meier; BICE CURIGER Image: Courtesy of Bice Curiger; REM KOOLHAAS Image: Courtesy of OMA / Photography by Fred Ernst; NIKLAS MAAK Image: Courtesy of Niklas Maak; MAI-THU PERRET Image: Courtesy Annik Wetter and Simon Lee Gallery; EMILY SEGAL Image: Courtesy of Emily Segal; PACÔME THIELLEMENT Photograph: Arnaud Baumann; PHILIP URSPRUNG Photograph: Peter Rüegg / ETH Zürich; ADRIÁN VILLAR ROJAS Photograph: Panos Kokkinias
curated by Daniel Baumann Bice Curiger Hans Ulrich Obrist Philip Ursprung
Bechtler Stiftung
Dr. Georg und Josi Guggenheim-Stiftung
Georg und Bertha Schwyzer-Winiker-Stiftung
Stiftung Stavros S. Niarchos Chur
Willi Muntwyler Stiftung