Meet us on Monday March 27 at the HEAD Campus auditorium to participate in the Talking HEADS of the collective "No Emissions, No Exploitation". This collective questions the modes of production in contemporary art by addressing the environmental issue from a political, social and economic point of view.

"We believe that the notion of sustainability needs to be addressed, when in fact Switzerland has among the highest carbon footprint, both in terms of overall emissions (per capita, direct and imported CO2) and grey emissions (CO2 emissions resulting from the production and transport of goods abroad).

The Swiss art system is at the helm of social and greenwashing, with trades continuously performed with little scrutiny and almost no transparency. When it comes to monitoring the climate impact, not only production and transport of artworks escape regulation, but also their mode of exhibition and the wage system attached to them are often detrimental to the environment. When not turned into waste shortly after its exhibition, the lifespan of an artwork may further drive CO2 emissions, when flown to a faraway collection financed by the byproducts of the fossil fuel economy.

Therefore, we’d like to ask the following questions:
What does it mean to operate “unplugged”, for example by means of an exhibition that produces no emissions, thinking of a zero carbon footprint from its inception, to its production and finally to its circulation? An exhibition that deliberately avoids producing more material and objects?
How can we sustainably change the mode in which we think, make, mediate and experience art?
How can such art have a positive impact when it comes to tackling climate change? And can the very same exhibition exempt itself from any form of exploitation?

We strongly believe that it is not enough to talk about climate justice by means of artworks, in exhibition catalogues, or during panels gathering experts, etc.. We are convinced that we need to change our habits: those connected to the production and circulation of art, but mostly the habits of our minds. Our project is about fostering a new type of dialogue with artists; by means of a holistic, communal approach to questioning our modes of being cultural producers."

No Emissions, No Exploitation: Yasmin Naderi Afschar, Elise Lammer & Vanessa Billy

Yasmin Naderi Afschar

Yasmin Naderi Afschar (born in Tehran, Iran) is a curator and writer based in Zurich, Switzerland. She is mediator for Neue Auftraggeber:innen Schweiz / Nouveaux Commanditaires Suisse, an international initiative for art projects commissioned by citizens, and the co-organizer of LE FOYER – In Process, a nomadic talk platform focusing on artistic processes. Before she was the curator of Aargauer Kunsthaus in Aarau, Switzerland from 2018 to 2021. Her recent exhibitions include «Hannah Villiger. Amaze Me» Muzeum Susch (2023, with Madeleine Schuppli), «Emma Kunz Cosmos. A Visionary in Dialogue with Contemporary Art» (Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau 2021 & Tabakalera, San Sebastián 2022), as well as solo exhibitions with, amongst others, Denise Bertschi, Cédric Eisenring and Marie Matusz. She writes regularly on art historical topics, contemporary art and visual culture. Recent edited volumes include «Emma Kunz Cosmos» (2021) and «Denise Bertschi. Strata. Mining Silence» (2020). Afschar was the winner of Asia Society Switzerland’s first Curator Residency at Tai Kwun Contemporary in Hong Kong in 2021 and currently serves on the jury boards of the artists residency programs of Tabakalera, San Sebastian and Podere Trafonti, Tuscany.

Elise Lammer

Elise Lammer (born in Lausanne, CH) is a curator engaged with exhibition making, public programming, archiving, teaching and gardening. Her work is committed in questions related to the role of space (public, domestic) in defining the construction of identity. Working across media and with a transgenerational and intersectional approach, her work aims to question and re-assess narratives that have suffered from monolithic, one-sided integration within History, while looking at such problematics from a contemporary prism.

She is currently a PhD candidate at Institute Art Gender and Nature in Basel, and University Linz, Austria, doing research on the garden of British artist, filmmaker, author and gay rights activist Derek Jarman (UK, 1942-1994). Since 2019, she’s been developing a garden in homage to Jarman's Prospect Cottage at La Becque | Artists Residency, La Tour-de-Peilz, where she’s also putting together an archive and artistic programme aimed at raising awareness around Jarman's legacy.

• In 2015 she founded the research platform and collective Alpina Huus, a performance-led project and research collective dedicated to investigate the relationship between performance and domestic space. Alpina Huus has authored projects Europe-wide, including at Fondation Beyeler, Riehen
• the Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon
• mumok, Museum Ludwig, Vienna
• the Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin
• and Arsenic, Contemporary Performing Arts Center, Lausanne.

Elise Lammer is currently teaching the MFA Fine Arts Course at Institute Art, Gender, Nature in Basel, where she’s invested in sharing knowledge around counter-hegemonic spaces, histories, and figures.

Vanessa Billy

• Vanessa Billy currently lives and works in Zürich. She studied at Chelsea College in London and did an exchange year at Cooper Union in New York in 2000. In her practice she is looking for ways to engage the senses and the mind in an environment of complex materiality. Variously incorporating waste products or disused industrial parts, as well as self-made elements made of bronze, bio-resin, silicone or feathers, her works explore the recesses of an origin common to all living and non-living things. Her installations, when multiples pieces come together to form an environment, often use small but pervasive interventions, such as changes to the hue of the light, a vapor in the air or the emission of low screeching sounds.
  In giving form to processes of constant exchange within our environment she attempts to bring a tangible reality to the multifarious ways humans impact the planet.
  In 2021 she had a set of retrospective exhibitions: ‘We Become’ at Kunsthaus Pasquart, Biel, CH, which evolved around material ecologies, traces of industry and presented a landscape of altered nature. Running parallel was the exhibition ‘Redevenir’ at Villa Bernasconi, Geneva, CH, which centered on the human and the cyclical.
  Other solo shows include: 'Dear Life', Centre Culturel Suisse, Paris, FR (2017)
• 'We dissolve&#39
• Kunsthalle Sankt Gallen, 'Sustain sustain', Collective, Edinburgh, UK (2014).
  Recent group shows include: 'Oil. Beauty and Horror in the Petrol Age', Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, DE (2021)
• 'Swiss Sculpture 1945 to today&#39
• Kunsthaus Aarau, CH (2021)
• ‘WE HYBRIDS!’, Istituto Swizzero, Roma, IT (2020)
• 'Slow Objects', The Common Guild, Glasgow, UK (2017). The public sculpture ‘La Matrice’ is exhibited at the Rolex Learning Center at the EPFL in Lausanne until August 2023.