Other Voices, Other Rooms

Documents an extraordinary art-and-architecture project in Zurich.

The new building for the City of Zurich Police’s criminal investigation branch, completed in 2021, was a house of art before it became a house of the police. For “Other Voices, Other Rooms,” an extraordinary art-and-architecture project, curator Adam Szymczyk invited international artists to engage with the building’s architecture and institutional context. The resulting works by Ross Birrell (Scotland, UK), Banu Cennetoglu (Turkey), Zehra Dogan (Kurdistan, Turkey), David Harding (Scotland, UK), Hiwa K (Germany, born in Kurdistan, Turkey), and Daniel Knorr (Germany, born in Romania) were on public display in the building in 2021, before the police moved in.

Only David Harding’s contribution has remained as a permanent and publicly accessible artwork, a text installation that is now embedded in the concrete floor outside the building’s main entrance. However, the entire process of the project was documented by Zurich-based photographer Melanie Hofmann. A selection of her shots is also permanently connected to the building in the shape of screen prints on interior walls. They bear witness to its past life and preserve the spaces of thought created by art.

Through images and texts, Other Voices, Other Rooms offers insights into a unique art project that responds to the challenges and potential of art and building in a way that is as consistent as it is productive.

Adam Szymczyk is an art critic and curator. He served as director and chief curator of Kunsthalle Basel (2003–14) and was artistic director of Documenta 14 in Kassel and Athens (2017).