Opening: 30 November 2024, 17:00-22:00
Bagno Popolare / Bad zum Raben is a landmark for Switzerland as it is housed in one of the oldest bath hotel premises in the town of Baden. It is also a paradigm for reclaiming living spaces and vital resources, repairing, reconnecting and reactivating modes and spaces of healing. Mainly for manifesting forces of togetherness. Through its increasing number of around 850 owners and a local and international community of thousands around the project, it became a physical place where aspects of healing, care, art and justice meet and merge and grow.
Recently, the combined efforts of the ZHdK international office, DKV and MTR, initiated a collaboration with the Accademia di Belle Arti in Palermo. After a visit to the “Blue Paths” summer school in Sicily organized by the University of Stuttgart, TH Nürnberg, and Accademia di Belle Arti di Palermo in late September-early October 2024, the goal is to work towards further exchange on the topics of health and care, natural resources and (re)activation of places of healing. The first result is two consecutive exhibitions at the Bad zum Raben, where in October 2024, art students from Palermo and architecture students from Stuttgart and Nürnberg exhibit the projects they created during the summer school in Sicily. And starting on November 30th, the ZHdK MTR students will present the works they created during the project week / excursion “Acts of Attention” in Methana, Greece.
In ancient Greece, healing and therapy were inseparable from nature, art and altered states of consciousness, like dreaming. Treatment often involved intervention from the god of Health himself including healing rituals of a mystical character; this is the reason there is no plethora of archaeological findings on insights or detailed testimonies of medical cases. What is known is that acts of healing were acts of interconnectedness between humans and immortals, the physical and the metaphysical realm.
Methana was once known as a booming Greek bathtown, a Loutropolis. Located in a volcanic peninsula, the mineral spring waters are potent with sulfur, written about by the historian Pausanias and used to attract thousands of visitors every year to its state-built hydrotherapy bath premises. They are now closed for decades, however two springs find outlets in the sea water, where elderly patients are still returning to heal.
A number of abandoned hotels of art nouveau architecture also remain from the era. There also had theaters, and after WWII took care of veterans. Spring sites, a village built on lava, the volcano, and historic buildings, pits with healing water in the sea as well as other makeshift structures become our hosts and occupy us at the same time. Some of their impressions and particles we carry all the way to Baden. From spring to spring, this is an invitation.
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Alba Balmaseda-Domínguez Universität Stuttgart - PhD student advanced-in-candidacy at Università degli Studi Roma Tre
Kathrin Doppler MTR ZHdK Alumna – Curator at Bagno Popolare
Eirini Sourgiadaki PhD student TAP – Teaching at MTR DKV, Research Associate in Dossier Learning Teaching ZHdK
Lydia Xynogala PhD gta ETH, founder of Friends of the 750 mineral springs of Greece
(OFFSEASON Research Group)
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Opening hours:
30.11.24 – 25.1.2025
Thursday & Friday: 16:00 - 20:00
Saturday: 14:00 - 18:00
Sunday: 10:00 - 16:00
links
Radio interview with Lily Redman https://kanalk.ch/beitrag/20241220-2
