ATLAS REVOLVING HISTORIES on translocal performance art Switzerland

published by Vexer Verlag, 2026

Content

This publication allows readers a first-time overview of the performance scenes, artists, performance locations and festivals in multilingual Switzerland. First- and second-hand accounts provide insights into and cross-references between the different performance networks. Based on collective research and mappings at various locations, the authors describe “performance landscapes” from Santa Maria Val Müstair to Basel, and from Eastern Switzerland to Lake Geneva. Starting with the origins of performance art in the mid-1960s, the text contributions reach all the way to current developments. The history of performance art is not uniform. It is made up of various narratives, encompasses plural concepts, and it wends its way through many languages, places and disciplinary frameworks.

This publication follows the Reader Revolving Histories – on translocal performance art Switzerland, which was released in 2025.

Text contributions

Ursula Badrutt, Mathias Balzer, Claire de Ribaupierre Furlan, Esther Maria Jungo, Marie-Ève Knoerle, Muda Mathis, Mary Paterson, Dorothea Rust, Andrea Saemann, Marcel Schwald, Benjamin Sunarjo, Margarit von Büren

My text contribution

... A QUEER CROSS-READING OF ZÜRICH'S PERFORMANCE MOVEMENTS: FROM THEIR ASSUMED, SPECULATED AND NEGOCIATED BEGINNINGS UNTIL CA. 2021

I surf in real time in a road movie through the atlas of Zürich's performance movements, through the map that emerged from two oral history events in 2021 at the Zürcher Hochschule der Künste ZHdK and at Tanzhaus Zürich.*1 I have tranferred the great number and diversity of everything to be found there onto chronological lists. Arranged according to places, cultural spaces, production sites, political movements, performance formats, festivals, legendary guest appearances, activist initiatives, initiatives to celebrate self-help, solo artists, group and collective formats, educational institutions and the photographers who capture it all. Emotionally affected by current events, I try to read them via their cross-connections to one another.

In the 1980s, I immerse myself in the dance performance art scenes in New York, while also commuting to Zürich, experiencing Zürich's performance movements from this divided view. And because we are not only choreographed in the art of dance, but also constantly choreographed in private and public everyday spaces, I take a radically subjective approach seen through the lens of choreopolitics, which I have set down in my text in the «READER REVOLVING HISTORIES».*2

Atlas-text with *footnotes
I recommend reading the Atlas-text alongside the separate PDF file uploaded here containing the *151 footnotes.
*151 footnotes with references and sources