Zurich meets Zurich 2020
The "Zurich meets Berlin" festival was planned for this year as part of the "Integrated Location and Destination Marketing" (ISDM). However, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, it will not take place in the German capital until 2021. Nevertheless, Urban Development Zurich wants to fulfil its task again in 2020 and present Zurich as a location with all its qualities. An important aspect of the event series is to present Zurich as a cultural, research and knowledge location. This year, we have therefore decided to strengthen Zurich's image of a vibrant cultural city abroad, even under pandemic-related conditions. We embarked on a search for a suitable format that would show the city of Zurich as a cosmopolitan city and underline its attractiveness, while at the same time being typically "Zurich" and aimed at the entire city population.
A festival that meets these criteria wonderfully is the Zurich Theater Spektakel (13 to 30 August 2020). Urban development will therefore integrate "Zurich meets your City" into the Theater Spektakel in summer 2020 and dedicate a selected project to the people of Zurich – "Zurich meets Zurich".
The selection fell on William Forsythe's project "City of Abstracts". William Forsythe is one of the most important and innovative choreographers of contemporary dance. In January 2020, the Zurich Opera House honored the American with a ballet evening shortly after his seventieth birthday. In his more than 45 years of professional experience, he dared to cross fascinating boundaries of his genre. His works are known for having detached the practice of ballet from the classical repertoire and transformed it into a dynamic art form of the 21st century. Forsythe's interest in basic organizational principles has also led him to realize projects in the fields of installation, film and Internet-based knowledge development.
In his installation «City of Abstracts» (2000), visitors are filmed by a camera with integrated video software. Their appearance and movements are edited and a delayed, unsynchronized version of the audience's live actions are projected onto a screen. The bodies merge into a dance of stretched and spiral forms and performances are created from everyday gestures. Laughter and complicity overcome the lack of self-confidence, as the video installation invites you to play with her.
With his installations, which Forsythe summarizes under the title "Choreographic Objects", he blurs the boundaries between performance, sculpture, video and installation. The audience is always invited to participate in the work. The installations reveal the way people consciously and unconsciously move through space and time, interacting with each other and reacting to the potential as well as to the limits of their own bodies.
Zurich meets Zurich at Theaterspektakel
The aim of the event series «Zurich meets» is to present Zurich abroad as a vibrant city of culture, an excellent hub for research as well as an innovative business location. Due to current travel restrictions, this year's edition takes place in Zurich under the motto «Zurich meets Zurich» to shine a light on one major event in Zurich's cultural agenda - the Zürcher Theaterspektakel.
City of Abstracts by William Forsythe at Zürcher Theaterspektakel
For this year's Theater Spektakel, William Forsythe had adapted his interactive video installation «City of Abstracts», which moved through Zurich in the evening hours over a ten-day period in August 2020. A huge screen is strapped to a van, which normally transports window panes. It reflects the viewers in artistically distorted ways, provokes them to move and to become choreographic subjects themselves. The installation has been part of the event series «Zurich meets». Its aim is to present Zurich as an attractive city of culture, an excellent hub for education, research and science as well as an innovative business location. Due to current travel restrictions, this year's event takes place in Zurich under the motto «Zurich meets Zurich».