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From left to right: Tamara Maggi, Stefan Schellinger, Livio Baumgartner, Mischa Camenzind, Samantha Zaugg, Patrizia Mazzei, Philipp Ehgartner, Peter Baracchi. Photo: Christian Baracchi<\/p>\nFrom left to right: Tamara Maggi, Stefan Schellinger, Livio Baumgartner, Mischa Camenzind, Samantha Zaugg, Patrizia Mazzei, Philipp Ehgartner, Peter Baracchi. Photo: Christian Baracchi<\/p>\n
Occupying the former museum\u2019s 1,200 square meters of exhibition space across five floors \u2014 and expanding into more than 2,000 square meters by activating the cellar, offices, storage areas, shop, caf\u00e9, and rooftop \u2014 the collective takeover reclaims a site that for decades housed an established art institution and recasts it as a field of coexistence. Within this newly formed terrain, distinct artistic positions meet, diverge, and hold their ground together without submitting to a single order, turning coexistence itself into an intervention in the conditions of artistic production and visibility.<\/p>\n
Alongside 6\u00bd \u2014 a nomadic artist-run platform known for large-scale interventions in vacant urban spaces \u2014 the project brings together Hotel Tiger, an independent artist-run space dedicated to experimental formats and community-building across disciplines through exhibitions in public and alternative spaces; Die Diele, an innovative vitrine-based exhibition space focused on site-specific artistic encounters; and Papillarya, which develops transdisciplinary exhibitions beyond the white cube. It also includes MATERIAL and volumes, both central actors within Zurich\u2019s independent publishing and discursive art scene, alongside zwischentext, a multilingual, feminist, and (post)migrant literary collective that connects cultures and languages through poetry, essays, festivals and interdisciplinary practices. Together, these collectives represent some of the most active and interconnected positions within Zurich\u2019s contemporary art field.<\/p>\n
![\"Exhibition](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/the-collective-takeover-09-1014x676.jpg\")
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![\"Exhibition](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/the-collective-takeover-07-1014x676.jpg\")
\nExhibition view: Oceans Flow Upwards. Photos: Peter Baracchi<\/p>\n
Conceived by Peter Baracchi, \u201cOceans Flow Upwards\u201d grew from his own multilayered experiences as an artist, curator, project manager, and co-founder of 6\u00bd, as well as from his early career roles at Haus Konstruktiv as museum technician and exhibition photographer. Having worked inside the former museum\u2019s premises, Baracchi closely followed the relocation of Museum Haus Konstruktiv to the Areal L\u00f6wenbr\u00e4ukunst and recognized that the interval before reconstruction would leave the Selnau building temporarily empty. This vacancy struck him as impossible to ignore. \u201cThe art scene is struggling every day to find places, to get visibility, to exhibit, to do projects,\u201d he says; an empty museum in the centre of Zurich, he insisted, \u201ccannot happen.\u201d He therefore contacted EWZ and the City of Zurich early on, trying to learn more about their plans and to push for the building\u2019s temporary cultural use. After months of uncertainty, the City of Zurich informed him in February that an interim use might be possible. He began developing the entire concept while the project was still only a tentative possibility, before it was formally secured in March.<\/p>\n
![\"Exhibition](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/the-collective-takeover-03.jpg\")
Exhibition view: Oceans Flow Upwards. Photo: Peter Baracchi<\/p>\n
From the beginning, the symbolic force and scale of the building mattered to Baracchi because they opened a possibility too large for than 6\u00bd alone. The project\u2019s significance for Zurich\u2019s wider independent art scene led him to invite other collectives into the process. Collaboration, however, did not mean dividing the museum into separate territories. \u201cI don\u2019t want to divide the museum into different off-spaces, because then it will be like an art fair. I don\u2019t want an art fair. I don\u2019t want the competition.\u201d Artists were invited by the collectives rather than selected by open call or jury; \u201cwe didn\u2019t choose the artworks. We chose the artists,\u201d he explains. Baracchi and Mischa Camenzind, one of the three co-founders of 6\u00bd, developed the placement of works on site, while the public program grew from proposals by the collectives and artists themselves. His vision for the exhibition remains the clearest: \u201cone exhibition, and not seven different exhibitions.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"Exhibition](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/the-collective-takeover-05.jpg\")
Exhibition view: Oceans Flow Upwards. Photo: Peter Baracchi<\/p>\n
That the project remains open through Zurich Art Weekend, with a full public program, is not incidental. Baracchi pushed for the exhibition period to extend into mid-June because, in his view, \u201cthe off scene, the alternative art scene, is also part of the Zurich Art Weekend. It shouldn\u2019t be only for the big galleries.\u201d Indeed, one of Zurich Art Weekend\u2019s distinctive qualities is the breadth of what it gathers into one compact public constellation: museums, galleries, universities, foundations, off-spaces, editions, publishers, and public and private collections. In 2025, the event brought together 71 venues, more than 75 exhibitions, over 150 events, and more than 180 artists; its 2026 edition expects more than 45,000 visitors.1<\/a> By entering that frame with 80 artists and seven collectives, \u201cOceans Flow Upwards\u201d enlarges what Zurich Art Weekend can hold in view at once. Measured against the city\u2019s population, Zurich Art Weekend has a striking density, with roughly 100 visitors per 1,000 residents, compared with about 38 for Berlin Art Week.2<\/a><\/p>\n Yet this density exists within a city where cultural space is increasingly scarce. In its four-year cultural policy framework, the Kulturleitbild 2024\u20132027, the City of Zurich describes the lack of available, suitable, and affordable spaces for cultural production and presentation as a pressing problem, noting that high rents make it increasingly difficult for the independent scene to remain in the city centre. The report explicitly recognizes off-spaces as vital to a living art scene and acknowledges that support for these self-organized spaces is currently insufficient. It therefore proposes a broader \u201cR\u00e4ume f\u00fcr die Kultur\u201d strategy, with additional annual funding rising from CHF 450,000 in 2024 to CHF 1.3 million in 2027 for the preservation and creation of cultural spaces, including recurring operating support for new presentation venues and increased funding for off-spaces.3<\/a><\/p>\n Josh Kline\u2019s recent essay, \u201cNew York Real Estate and the Ruin of American Art,\u201d4<\/a> makes clear why the struggle over space extends beyond the immediate problem of securing studio and exhibition spaces.\u00a0 Although Kline writes from New York, the conditions he describes cannot be confined to New York alone. They speak to a broader art-world reality in which real estate shapes what artists can make, where their work becomes visible, and who remains able to continue producing. For Kline, artist-run spaces matter because it is there that artists retain the authority to decide \u201cwho exhibits, what a show is, and what art can be.\u201d5<\/a> Their disappearance narrows access and weakens the conditions from which new practices and movements emerge. When space contracts, artistic production contracts with it: politically, culturally, and institutionally.<\/p>\n Economist and Nobel laureate Daron Acemoglu identifies shared prosperity and self-government as two foundational promises of liberal democracy: prosperity must extend beyond those already in positions of power, while communities must retain the capacity to organize and shape the conditions of their own lives.6<\/a> Seen from this perspective, \u201cOceans Flow Upwards\u201d becomes more than a temporary exhibition. It responds to an art world in which access to space, visibility, funding, and institutional recognition remains unevenly distributed, shaping who can continue producing, who becomes visible, and whose practices enter public circulation. The collective takeover exemplifies the force of independent artist-run spaces precisely because off-spaces already carry the habits of self-organization: they gather communities, create access, build visibility, and produce value through participation. Yet such forms of self-government require material conditions in order to become visible at scale. In this case, the City of Zurich\u2019s decision to make the vacant building available through Raumb\u00f6rse Z\u00fcrich, its platform for temporary cultural uses, provided the infrastructural opening, while the collectives transformed that opening into a living field of shared agency.<\/p>\n For Baracchi, the project\u2019s afterlife matters as much as its scale. He wants \u201cOceans Flow Upwards\u201d to remain in memory \u201cin a good way,\u201d as something people continue to speak about in the coming years. Within those memories, he also wants the visibility created by the project to keep moving outward: artists and collectives meeting new audiences, small bubbles of competition beginning to burst, Zurich\u2019s wider independent art scene becoming more willing to collaborate, and visibility becoming less solitary. \u201cWorking with joy,\u201d he says, is central to that process. \u201cSo is celebration\u201d, he adds: a celebration of art, of Zurich\u2019s art scene, and of the chance to create together a space whose force could only emerge through collaboration.<\/p>\n Oceans Flow Upwards is on view until June 14, 2026, at EWZ Unterwerk Selnau, Zurich. Full exhibition program, including special opening hours for Zurich Art Weekend: www.selnau.space<\/a><\/p>\n Curation and Organization: Concept and Initiative: Peter Baracchi in collaboration with Raumb\u00f6rse @pbaracchi<\/p>\n Supported by City and Canton of Zurich, Cassinelli-Vogel Stiftung, Raumb\u00f6rse of City of Zurich \u2014 @stadtzh @kantonzuerich www.raumboerse-zh.ch<\/a>, www.cassinelli-vogel-stiftung.ch<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Exhibition](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/the-collective-takeover-06-1014x676.jpg\")
Exhibition view: Oceans Flow Upwards. Photo: Peter Baracchi<\/p>\n![\"Exhibition](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/the-collective-takeover-04.jpg\")
Exhibition view: Oceans Flow Upwards. Photo: Peter Baracchi<\/p>\n![\"Exhibition](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/the-collective-takeover-08-1014x676.jpg\")
Photo: Peter Baracchi<\/p>\n
6\u00bd \u2014 www.sechseinhalb.ch<\/a> \u2014 @6einhalb
Hotel Tiger \u2014 www.hoteltiger.ch<\/a> \u2014 @hotel.tiger
Die Diele \u2014 www.diediele.format.com<\/a> \u2014 @die_diele_die
Papillarya \u2014 www.papillarya.com<\/a> \u2014 @papillarya
MATERIAL \u2014 www.materialismus.ch<\/a> \u2014 @material_zh
volumes \u2014 www.volumeszurich.ch<\/a> \u2014 @volumeszurich
zwischentext \u2014 www.zwischentext.ch<\/a> \u2014 @zwichentext<\/p>\n