ABSTRACT
invisible Zürichs did not only catch the attention of the performaCITY festival in Basel. In January 2014, a few weeks after the closing party of invisible Zürichs, we were contacted by the festival organizer of Hik et Nunk – ‘new festival of contemporary cultures’ – in Monthey, inviting us to work with the local population ‘to “redesign” the city in an artistic/utopian way’ (invitation email from Hik et Nunk organizer, 08.01.2014). Particularly important for the organizers in this regard was that our project would have a clear end result in the form of an ‘exhibitable’ model that would ‘sketch visionary or utopian urban projects’ (personal email correspondence, 03.02.2014). A model-based project would, they argued, be ‘simple to explain’ and ‘really interest the media and decision makers, particularly if we work with different kinds of users’. We – the zURBS team – accordingly proposed to make a model-making project aimed at opening up a debate concerning the future visions for Monthey, working with the notion of utopia as a critical model for anticipatory consciousness and open-ended expressions of desire for a better way of living (Pinder 2002). The idea of changing the format of our workshops – from the abstract archiving of invisibilities to the more concrete model-making expressing the participant’s dreams and desires for Monthey – seemed like an opportunity to get at some of the challenges of invisible Zürichs and stadtARCHIV. Would this project help us find a middle way between being abstract and open and being unidirectional and leading when representing the wishes, desires, wants, and dreams of the participants? What forms of claim-making would this format enable on behalf of its participants?
