William Forsythe. The Sense of things – Preview of the Kunsthaus extension

Forsythe’s work places visitors centre stage, and invites them to take a unique choreographic tour of the still unoccupied Chipperfield architecture.

Humanity, architecture and art

Admission

CHF 20.–/16.– (concessions and groups)
Free admission for members and children and young people under the age of 17.

PLAN YOUR VISIT

Note for groups

We look forward to welcoming you to the Kunsthaus. For organizational reasons, prior registration is required. info@kunsthaus.ch, +41 44 253 84 84

Information about our safety concept can be found under 'Useful information about your visit'.

HYGIENE & SAFETY

For the first encounter with the new museum building, the Kunsthaus Zürich has invited the artist and choreographer William Forsythe (b. 1949) to produce a new work. ‘The Sense of Things’ can be experienced exclusively for four weeks in the museum’s new building by architect David Chipperfield. It is the first artistic intervention in the new space. Curated by Mirjam Varadinis, ‘The Sense of Things’ encourages the visitor to build a direct relationship with the architecture that will house some of Kunsthaus Zürich’s most vibrant and significant collections.

Museum as ‘Klangkörper’

In Forsythe’s acoustic intervention, deconsecrated church bells of different sizes, pitches, and timbres will be activated in a contrapuntal composition that is widely distributed across the spaces of the new extension. In considering Chipperfield’s building as an immense sounding-body, Forsythe proposes that visitors individually tune the composition via their perambulations through the new museum, thereby embodying his choreographic proposition.

William Forsythe, The Sense of Things, 2021, Kunsthaus Zürich, Photo: Franca Candrian © William Forsythe

William Forsythe, The Sense of Things, 2021, Kunsthaus Zürich © William Forsythe

William Forsythe; photo by Dominik Mentzos 1.jpg — William Forsythe, photo © Dominik Mentzos

Removal of church bells in Dusseldorf, January 2021 Photo © Katja Illner

Visitors in focus

Forsythe’s examination of visitor experience vis-à-vis the new architecture posits acoustics as an ever-present, but invisible facet of museum design that has significant effects upon those experiences. ‘The Sense of Things’ emphasizes the visitor’s curiosity as key to apprehending the composition’s ‘Klangfarben’, nuances which are shaped by each visitor’s unfolding, investigative relationship to the building’s natural acoustics.

Kunsthaus Zürich, extension by David Chipperfield Photo © Juliet Haller, Urban Planning Department, City of Zurich

A sense of purpose

With their new cooperation, Kunsthaus Zürich and Forsythe wish to offer the broadest possible public a place where, after tremendous social disruption, community can once again be recreated. Gathering to experience the inherent sound of a building is certainly an atypical activity but also an unexpectedly gentle way to introduce the museum as a site that will be performing a significant civic role in the near future.

Curated by Mirjam Varadinis

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