Wind Tunnel Festival 2023

Between Parafiction and Parascience

June 23-24, 2023
curated by ~ tilde
Wind Tunnel, ZHdK, Zurich

There is a wind tunnel on the roof of the art school in Zurich. It is an open space that provides a gentle airstream –molding the invisible– and undermines modernist techno-positive backgrounds. In the second edition of the Wind Tunnel Festival, we ask: What are the realities we live in? Whose realities do we perceive? We explore the various make-believes between parafiction (a concept established by Carrie Lambert-Beatty) and parascience, crisscrossing fiction and fact, nurturing relational thinking, and seeking nondualist approaches.

The Wind Tunnel Festival shifts attention and resists the binarisms of objective knowledge versus sensual, emotional, and spiritual experiences. It questions their supposition and history while tracing their blind spots. We sway with one foot in parascience and need many feet on the ground. Together with all participants, we follow the multiple flows to create new narratives through imaginative space-making and transdisciplinary co-learning. This is concerned with engaging the body in activities of making and discussing, in which simultaneities between embodied knowledges and critical practices could inspire lasting exchanges. The Wind Tunnel is a walk-in sculpture with its ecosystem meant for convening wind and people, conducting flows of air and thought, to share practices and challenges.

On June 23–24, 2023, the Wind Tunnel invites artists, scientists, and the audience for exchange and encounters. In open rehearsals, we spend time together and search for new insights and moments of connection.

We will approach the wind through sound, film, literature, and music, and talk to it through dreaming practice with contributions by Wren Cellier, Florian Dombois, Sher Doruff, Giulia Essyad, Zainabu Jallo, Philipp Modersohn, Isabel Nolan, Lucas Odahara, Christoph Oeschger, Belinda Quirke, Helene Romakin, U5, Vivian Wang.