Structures of Unfeeling
SOHERE (Joseph Baan, wolf engelen and Vanessa Jane Phaff)
11 October – 9 November, 2024
Opening 10 October 2024, 6–8pm
with contributions by bela, Brit Barton, Monika Dorniak, gotgha, Luc Häfliger, Luna Joubert, Margaretha Jüngling, Laura Leupi, Carolina Mendonça, Ronce, Avgi Saketopoulou and Joshua Wicke
Structures of Unfeeling is an exhibition and learning environment focused on fostering public dialogue around sexualised violence. Initiated by the research group SOHERE (Joseph Baan, wolf engelen, and Vanessa Jane Phaff) and marking the conclusion of Joseph Baan’s residency at BINZ39, this project collaborates with a diverse group of practitioners from art, education, music, performance, dramaturgy, and academia, many of whom have histories of being subjected to sexualised violence or childhood sexual abuse.
The goal of Structures of Unfeeling is to collectively give form and voice to the unspeakable and unrepresentable aspects of sexual trauma. Through a programme taking place at both BINZ39 and Tanzhaus (for details on the programme, visit binz39.ch), the project provides a platform and proposes different situations for conversation, collective thinking and making. SOHERE aims to offer a variety of ways to address, reflect upon, and share elusive histories of sexual trauma—histories often fragmented due to memory’s caprice, and compounded by feelings of shame, confusion, and dissociation.
The project’s title draws from Lauren Berlant’s essay, Structures of Unfeeling: Mysterious Skin, where Berlant reflects upon trauma and underperformance. Berlant suggests that reticent or recessive performative modes effectively stage crises through their illegibility.1 Contrary to Freud’s concept of «mechanical traumatic repetition,» Berlant introduces the «unexpected spaciousness of affective disengagement.»2 Rejecting melodramatic intensification, unfeeling gives up on a coherent relation between reality and the affective response to reality.
Trauma studies have long grappled with the challenge of archiving traumatic experiences. These experiences remain often taboo in public discourse, pushing them into spaces of silence. Archives represent a convergence of history and memory, built around the core question: “What should we preserve?” In An Archive of Feelings, Cvetkovich questions the possibility of archiving difficult emotions and asks which stories evade the archive. What remains untold, and why? How can we find new ways to document such histories?
Cvetkovich: “Although one feminist response has been to argue for the inclusion and equation of sexual trauma with other forms, my hunch has been that its persistent invisibility actually demands a quite different approach, one that can recognize trauma’s specificities and variations.”3
SOHERE have consistently worked to develop spaces that foster new forms of collective learning through artistic production. The collective calls these formats “learning envinroments.” In this case the learning environment proposes a fragmentary and performative archive that might be filled with “documents” by participants and visitors over the course of the exhibition. These environments are always meant to disrupt conventional hierarchies in knowledge production and educational practices, placing emphasis on art as a vector for transformative learning experiences.
SOHERE believes it is critical to bring this conversation into public view in Zürich. Women’s shelters (Frauenhäuser) are continuously full, and Swiss statistics on sexual assault mirror international figures, yet public discourse addressing sexual violence remains scarce. With this project, SOHERE hopes to cultivate awareness and offer an alternative approach that centers the voices of victim-survivors to confronting this issue.
Organized and curated by SOHERE
PROGRAMME
October 10, 18–20h Opening of the exhibition at BINZ39
October 12–13, 14–18h Reminiscent Armours, workshop by Monika Dorniak at Tanzhaus Zürich, (registration via tanzhaus-zuerich.ch)
October 23, 19h Screening of Gregg Araki’s film Mysterious Skin (2004) & discussion of Lauren Berlant’s essay Structures of Unfeeling at BINZ39 (please read in advance: 15orient.com/files/berlant-structures-of-unfeeling.pdf)
October 21–25 Open Studio: (Un)Safe Spaces seminar week with students from the Department of Architecture ETH (open during opening times of BINZ39)
October 26–27 Symposium Risking Repetition with contributions by Avgi Saketopoulou, Carolina Mendonça, bela, Ronce, Luc Häfliger and others.
Curated by Joshua Wicke (discourse & performance) & Luc Häfliger (music) in dialogue with Joseph Baan. This event takes place at BINZ39 and Tanzhaus (tickets & registration via tanzhaus-zuerich.ch)
November 2 Night Vigil. Closed performance by SOHERE
November 9, 14–18h Finissage at BINZ39
Photos: Marc Jauslin