Zurich's Shedhalle is a space for process-based art on the city's lakeshore. It was originally
part of a former textile mill that was converted first into an assembly plant for telephones
and radios and in the early 1980s into a campus known as the Rote Fabrik (the red factory)
hosting a theater and concert hall a restaurant and bar studios for visual and performing
artists and art spaces. Since its inception in 1985 the Shedhalle has been a place where
independent artists communities and activists come together and work. New exhibition formats
as well as artistic practices and forms of knowledge generation have evolved here often ahead
of their time. They reflect different emancipatory and socio-critical concerns of their
respective times. Loving Shedhalle marks the venue's 40th anniversary. It reflects on its
history artistic and curatorial strategies and social resonance chambers and explores the
concerns negotiated here over all these years. The book's title reflects the idea of love as an
affective practice: causes are deeply interwoven with emotions convictions and decisions. At
the Shedhalle strategies and formats unfolded that aimed at making art effective beyond art
itself. The volume brings together voices from people involved with Shedhalle in various
manners and roles from the early days until the present. It highlights the place's visionary
potential of four decades and explores how the presence is moved by echoes of the past that
continue to give artistic curatorial and sociopolitical impulses.
