The Descent 18 May — 02 July 2023 (Kunsthalle Zürich)

With works by Aidan Pontarini, Julia Scher and Gili Tal. Performance and installation sound by Scott Carver.

“As I stood” “in a station” “looking into” “the tunnel,”
“I saw” “disembodied” “lights” “coming towards us” “Then I realized”
“a black train” “a solid black train” “was arriving” “at the station”
“It stopped” “The doors opened” “I entered, & sat down” “& then

“a voice announced:” “This particular” “train” “will leave the subway”
“for another,” “deeper,” “unilluminated place,” “where all is”
“uncharted” “If you want” “to travel with us,” “listen first:”
“The sides” “of the train,” “the train’s form will” “fall away”

– Alice Notley, The Descent of Alette (1992)

Beneath most cities stretches a network of traffic tunnels and stations, filled with rushing trains and emptied figures — for everything here only exists on the way from one point to another. It is a space of waiting, but also of confrontation with social realities. From diving into the below-ground to re-emergence into the city bustle, people from different backgrounds share a common place and condition. In Alice Notley’s novel-length poem The Descent of Alette (1992) the context of riding the subway is seen like a journey into the underworld, a subterranean transit zone of diverse lost souls that exists beneath the patriarchally shaped megastructures of the (big) city, that forces authentic forms of life, cross-class encounters and a retreat from capitalist constraints into the underground.

In Zürich there is no subway – plans for a ‘Tiefbahn’ were rejected by the majority of its citizens in a referendum in 1973. For Backrooms, in collaboration with artist and poet Lauryn Youden, a subway station has been constructed in the basement of Kunsthalle Zürich. This site-specific installation, which includes artworks by Aidan Pontarini, Julia Scher and Gili Tal, will serve as a stage for the performance The Descent by Lauryn Youden on 17 May, 2023.