Join us on Saturday, 25 April, for the ACT Zurich Performance Festival, featuring 17 performances by artists from Swiss art academies at Dive Off-Space.
ACT is the performance festival of Swiss art academies, initiated in 2003, and offers a platform for art students to develop and present their projects.
Free admission.
Performances by:
Stella Inderbitzin - Nika Kostiuk - Batiste von Bergen – Vesselin - Libelli Zwirner - hope2 - Helene von Graffenried - Zora Moll – TribalBaby - Lea Widmer, Sienna Roth - Candice Dela Fudzie - Silfrún Una Guðlaugsdóttir - Sanja Lukanović - Susin Senguel - Eco Errázuriz - Billie AnGeL BliNG, Makhabbat Rakhmet, David JongSung Myung, Tobija Stuker
@nnikksi@batistevonb@libellizwirner@___m1ami helene67vg @leawidmer_@rtefakt@exactlyhowitis@silfrun@sanja_akut _xoxexoxe @ecoecoecooo@david_js_myung
ACT Zurich 2026 is a collaboration between ZHdK, F+F, and Dive.
@ff_kunst@dive_offspace
Graphic design by @flowerboytimmy@laramzp
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#zhdkfinearts #zhdkbachelorfinearts #zhdkmasterfinearts #zhdk @zhdkcampus
*English version begins on slide 5
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In der Vergangenheit hat sich gezeigt, dass Strategien zur Berücksichtigung neurodiverser Menschen den Besuch von Kulturveranstaltungen für das gesamte Publikum bereichern und angenehmer gestalten können.
Die Ausschreibung richtet sich daher an alle Kulturschaffenden, möchte jedoch insbesondere auch neurodiverse Menschen ansprechen. Gerade sie verfügen über wertvolle Erfahrungen und Perspektiven, die im kulturellen Alltag bislang häufig noch zu wenig Beachtung finden.
**Ausserdem werden auch Besuchende als Teil des Kulturschaffens betrachtet.
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Experience has shown that strategies designed with neurodiverse people in mind can enhance and improve the cultural event experience for all audiences.
This call is therefore addressed to cultural practitioners of all backgrounds, while placing particular emphasis on encouraging neurodiverse individuals to apply. Their perspectives and lived experiences are especially valuable and remain too often underrepresented in everyday cultural practice.
**In addition, visitors are also regarded as part of cultural practice
Saturday, December 13th from 2pm – Craft Café @dive_offspace 💖 💎 Pay what you can to use all the beads and materials, get help starting a craft project, or simply drop in for cookies! 🍪 All proceeds will be donated to organizations supporting Sudan (tba) 🇸🇩
Samstag, 13. Dezember ab 14 Uhr – Bastel-Café @dive_offspace 💖
💎 Gib, was du kannst: Nutze alle Perlen und Materialien, hol dir Unterstützung für dein Bastelprojekt oder komm einfach auf ein paar Kekse vorbei! 🍪
Alle Einnahmen gehen an Organisationen, die humanitäre Hilfe im Sudan leisten (Infos folgen). 🇸🇩
(The conversation will take place in English. The artist will join via videocall.)
Tarlan Lotfizadeh – «Erased Lips, Sealed Lines» TUE 18.11.2025, 7:30 PM
From the star-strewn skies of ancient Egyptian temple complexes to the visions of biblical revelations in Renaissance church frescoes and depictions of Persian mythologies — everywhere we sink into lapis lazuli and sense the bittersweet eternity of the arched firmament beneath which past, present, and future merge. In Tarlan Lotfizadeh’s latest work «The Sanctuary» this deepest blue marks the final refuge of boundless sorrow, where we recall a pure love brave enough to take shape before it was ever seen.
Beneath the steel of an abstracted bin, a surface turned silent witness, we find shelter and recognize ourselves in the absence of the sacred image that the London-based artist from Tehran deliberately withholds here. A shelter from salt upon our lips and from the scratch of caustic gas in our throats. Art sets no fires, and yet we smell the smoke of that September night in 2022. With anticipation, we look to the artist as she helps us learn the language of memories inscribed in objects — a language to which she returns again and again in her work.
@tarlanlotfizadeh
Drop by 💘 This is the way to the diving pool! 🤿🐠🐡 From the tram stop Wagonsfabrik to Grabenstrasse 3 in Schlieren it only takes you 5min! 4th floor 😉
(*blurred views bc my camera is broken and can not focus anymore 🥲)
(The conversation will take place in English. The artist will join via videocall.)
Mahdi Baraghithi – «Creativity Against Dehumanization. Testimonies of Political Imprisonment» THU 6.11.2025, 7:30 PM
Since time immemorial, people have practiced creative activities. Art and craftsmanship are what make us unique as living beings and what allow us to become truly human. Yet few know that the need for creative expression is deliberately denied to political prisoners. Despite these strategies of dehumanization, there are numerous testimonies of creative resistance from political imprisonment, as evidenced by an impressive collection of prisoners’ objects at the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum in Geneva.
How do prisoners manage, despite prohibitions and minimal access to the resources necessary for a dignified life, to create such objects and thereby escape strategies of oppression? The artist Mahdi Baraghithi explores this question in a series of works. He researches the techniques and materials used by Palestinian inmates in Israeli prisons and adapts them for his own creations. In doing so, his works undermine the censorship mechanisms of this authoritarian regime and illustrate the subversive power of art in the face of threats aimed not only at the body but also at erasing critical thought. In conversation, the artist provides insights into his latest works.
( @mahdi.baraghithi )
(The conversation will take place in English.)
Engy Mohsen – «Tied Tongues, Banned Words: Solidarity and the Struggle over Language» THU 30.10.2025, 7:30 PM
What does it mean when the language of liberation itself becomes suspect? In Gaza, people plead in broken English, translating their cries in the hope of being heard. Yet solidarity often stops at the border of translation. In Europe, xenophobia toward the Arabic language, which is inseparable from Arabphobia and Islamophobia, shapes what can and cannot be said. Zurich, tethered to Germany’s linguistic and political sphere, finds itself echoing Berlin’s bans on pro-Palestinian slogans, reminding us that censorship too has a language.
This talk moves between etymologies, chants, and testimonies, tracing how words like “intifada“, “sumud“, or even “liberation” resist easy translation. Language here is not neutral: it can wound, it can betray, but it can also refuse, insist, and cut like a knife. When Arabic’s persistence unsettles Europe’s linguistic hierarchies. What emerges is a form of semantic resistance — tongues refusing to be occupied — and a call to imagine solidarities that exceed both censorship and translation. Against the silencing of Arabic and the policing of solidarity, I want to think about translation as both fracture and bridge, and about voices that refuse to be domesticated by the language of power.
( @engyymohsen )
(Das Gespräch findet auf Deutsch statt.)
Mîrkan Deniz – «Fiktion als Mittel zur Dekolonisierung von Museumssammlungen» Sa, 18.10.2025, 15:00 Uhr
Längst etablierten Forscher*innen wie Bénédicte Savoy den Begriff der Repatriation – also der Rückführung in die Heimat – im postkolonialen Museumsdiskurs. Aufgrund seiner unkritischen Implikation eines patriarchalen Nationalismus ist dieser Begriff jedoch mit Vorsicht zu verwenden. Besonders in Kontexten, in denen koloniale Grenzziehungen indigene Identitäten bedrohen oder auszulöschen versuchen, kann Repatriation zur gewaltvollen Verdrehung historischer Narrative werden.
Im experimentellen Ausstellungsprojekt des Musée du Louvre und der Cité internationale des arts in Paris mit dem Titel «En présence de tous les êtres» präsentiert Mîrkan Deniz die neue Arbeit «Belonging (?)». Die künstlerische Auseinandersetzung widmet sich Objekten aus den Sammlungen namhafter ethnografischer Museen sowie deren Fundorten. In fiktiven Kurzgeschichten erzählt «Belonging (?)» von den Wegen ausgewählter Artefakte – von Kurdistan bis in die Vitrinen und Archive europäischer Ausstellungshäuser. Im Gespräch erläutert Deniz, weshalb die Frage nach Zugehörigkeit nicht nur Besitzansprüche in Frage stellt und welche Rolle Fiktion innerhalb dekolonialer Museumsforschung einnehmen kann.
