About
Draft explores contemporary art that initiates, provokes and contributes to public debates. It involves nine interdisciplinary collaboratives from nine cities: Beijing, Cairo, Cape Town, Hamburg, Hong Kong, Mexico City, Mumbai, St. Petersburg, and Zurich. Over a period of one year (2015–2016), the collaboratives developed and carried out projects in their local contexts.
The projects intervened in contexts of action, production and discourse, by exploring the imaginary, by rendering the latent visible or by critiquing concrete circumstances. Media censorship, state authoritarianism, social injustice, xenophobia, nationalism, various forms of violence, migration, the effect of frantic urbanisation, real estate speculation, commodities trading and repatriation are some of the pressing issues highlighted by these year-long investigations. Artists respond to these circumstances through critique and fiction, by establishing infrastructures, educational programmes and counter-publics, and by employing re-enactments and mnemonic techniques. They reveal the consequences of such phenomena and processes on our affective and intellectual life – in short, they draft a different history and a different present.
Bookended by the opening conference in Mumbai 2015, and the closing conference in Zurich 2016, Draft undertook various projects, including research and workshops, in each of the nine cities. A series of publications documents these site-sensitive artworks and events.
The conferences and the project as a whole brought together a cross-disciplinary group of artists, curators, philosophers, anthropologists and the like, who cooperated as collaboratives in wound up urban contexts.
Draft was initiated and coordinated by Khanabodosh, Mumbai, and by the Institute for Contemporary Art Research (IFCAR), Zurich University of the Arts.
People
(Most of the biographies date from 2016)
Zinnia Ambapardiwala, CAMP, Mumbai
Giorgio Biancorosso, Hong Kong
Hector Bourges Valles, Teatro Ojo, Mexico City
Helena Chávez Mac Gregor, Mexico City
Cosmin Costinas, Para Site, Hong Kong
Tsaplya Olga Egorova, Chto Delat, St. Petersburg
Laura Furlan, Teatro Ojo, Mexico City
Christian Hübler, knowbotiq, Zurich
Qinyi Lim, Para Site, Hong Kong
Jens Maier-Rothe, Beirut, Cairo
Cuauhtémoc Medina, Mexico City
Nikolay Oleynikov, Chto Delat, St. Petersburg
Karla Rodríguez, Teatro Ojo, Mexico City
Dmitry Vilensky, Chto Delat, St. Petersburg
Patricio Villareal, Teatro Ojo, Mexico City
Events
WHAT IS YOUR MISSION?
09–2017
DECANONISING THE UNIVERSITY
06–2017
LIBRARY
12–2016
ORCHESTRATIONS
11–2016
EXERCISES ON TRIALS
10–2016
AT NIGHT, LIGHTNING
08–2016
DRILL MAN (Premiere)
07–2016
DELINKING COMMODITY TRADING
07–2016
BOW CONVERSATIONS
07–2016
SIGHTING OF THE NEW MOON
07–2016
STAATPRAATJIES
06–2016
ELEGY
06–2016
THE CHARTER
06–2016
COLLECTIVE AMNESIA
06–2016
INFLUX III
06–2016
LETTER OPENING
05–2016
PARADE – ANOTHER PLANNING IS POSSIBLE
05–2016
SOMNYAMA NGONYAMA
05–2016
QUNUSA! BUHLE
05–2016
SOFT CORE – PROTECTION PROCEDURE
05–2016
ELSEWHERE – STRUGGLES ACROSS THE SEA
04–2016
LIMIT EXTENSION ANNIVERSARY
04–2016
WHAT IS A GARDEN?
04–2016
OPENING R AND R
03–2016
"AND MANY IMAGES CAME UPON ME"
01–2016
STATEMENT REGARDING CHANGE OF LEASE
09–2015
Publications
ONLINE (Cape Town Collaborative)
11–2020
BOOK (Hong Kong Collaborative)
11–2020
POSTCARD EDITION (Hamburg Collaborative)
11–2020
BOOK (Cairo Collaborative 2)
11–2020
BOOK (Zurich Collaborative)
04–2020
DVD EDITION (Beijing Collaborative)
06–2019
BOOK (Mexico City Collaborative)
11–2018
NEWSPAPER (St.Petersburg Collaborative)
05–2018
HANDMADE BOOKLET II (Cairo Collaborative 1)
09–2017
HAND-MADE BOOKLET I (Cairo Collaborative 1)
06–2017
Contact
Draft is a project conceived by Gitanjali Dang, Khanabadosh, Mumbai, and Christoph Schenker, Institute for Contemporary Art Research IFCAR, Zurich University of the Arts ZHdK.
Artistic directors
Gitanjali Dang
Artistic Director Khanabadosh, Mumbai
Phone: +91 98 20 414851
Website: http://khanabadosh.info
Prof. Christoph Schenker
Head of IFCAR Institute for Contemporary Art Research, Zurich
Phone: +41 43 446 6101
Website: www.ifcar.ch
Project associate (2015-2016)
Phalguni Desai, Mumbai
Linda Jensen, Zurich
Office
IFCAR Institute for Contemporary Art Research
Zurich University of the Arts ZHdK
Pfingstweidstr. 96 / P.O. Box
CH – 8031 Zurich
Phone: +41 43 446 61 01
Email: info.ifcar[at]zhdk.ch
Partners
Pro Helvetia – Swiss Arts Council
Connecting Spaces Hong Kong – Zurich, ZHdK
Supported by
artEDU Foundation
Stanley Thomas Johnson Foundation
ifa Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen
Website design and programming
Hubertus Design, Zurich
taywa gmbh, Zurich
Image captions and credits
Cairo collaborative: Jasmina Metwaly and Philip Rizk: Out on the Street, 2015, film still. Courtesy: the artists. Cape Town collaborative: Sethembile Msezane, Untitled (Freedom Day), 2014, Courtesy: the artist. Hamburg collaborative: Alice Peragine, Application Operation, 2014, site-specific performance at Galerie Genscher Park Hamburg. Courtesy: the artist. Photograph: Marcel Peragine. Hong Kong collaborative: Samson Young, Liquid Borders, 2012 – 2014, image documentation. Courtesy: the artist. Photograph: Vanessa Law. Mexico City collaborative: Teatro Ojo, NO?!, 2008, image documentation of first action: Each generation wants its own 1968, Zocalo Square of Mexico City. Interventions and creation of image-actions in public spaces in Mexico City, forty years after the 1968 Student Movement. Courtesy: the artists. Mumbai collaborative: CAMP, From Gulf to Gulf to Gulf, 2013, video still. Courtesy: the artists. Shanghai collaborative: Ju Anqi, There's a Strong Wind in Beijing, 1999, film still. Courtesy: the artist. St Petersburg collaborative: School for Engaged Art, Chto Delat, Atlas is Tired, 2014, performance documentation. Courtesy: the artists. Photograph: Vadim Lurie. Zurich collaborative: knowbotiq, MacGhillie_just a void, 2010. Courtesy: the artists. Photograph: Christoph Oeschger.