ARCHIVE
Feature 98

The WIND TUNNEL at ZURICH UNIVERSITY OF THE ARTS

Film: ZHdK Wind Tunnel Portrait - 8.49 mins

ZHdK WIND TUNNEL PORTRAIT

There is a wind tunnel on the roof of the Zurich University of the Arts, that functions as a space of collaboration and exchange amongst artists; artisan and scientists; people and spiritists. It is the laboratory of Florian Dombois, professor for Experimental Systems in Transdisciplinarity Studies, in which he works with his transdisciplinary group of students, PhDs and Postdocs, as well as welcoming guests from everywhere. The wind tunnel remains “empty” inside, like the Tao Teh King says: “Clay is fashioned into vessels; but it is on their empty hollowness, that their use depends.” (no. 11). Or as Hans-Jörg Rheinberger described it in his first visit 2013 “The wind tunnel is a model of a second order and at the same time unsettlingly specific.”

How to document such a place in flux, a place that relies on the visions of people who come? Dombois invited Patrica von Ah for a portrait in between the invisible and the facts. It became an intense collaboration and exchange taking finally the form of a small scale archive of scenes and moments, including short films, social media snippets, photographs and an artwork on its own. The wind tunnel portrait of von Ah and Dombois is meant to be explored, to be browsed through, to allow the viewer to follow his or her intuition.

Selection from the small scale media archive

WIND TUNNEL DOCUMENTARY COLLABORATION WITH ZURICH UNIVERSITY OF THE ARTS (ZHdK)
For usage requests or more information about the full archive please get in touch.