Washing is an activity that bears differentiations, between manual labor and luxury service, washer and washed, object and subject. The water acts as a liant, bridging social differences and binding identities onto a common ground, sometimes just for one instant. ZW operates a similar temporality within the precarious state of a interim use. This ominously intensifying limit characterizes the happening “Waschnacht”. One evening of washing together, performing leisure while reflecting on issues of cleanliness, shared culture of domestic objects and the value of dirt.

LET US BATHE INCENSE.

The evening is opened by laying out the carpet for you to have a drink and discuss on, to get into the theme or just to relax. The performance then follows the fordist production format of an industrial laundry, ranging from reception and storage in a wardrobe, to handwashing and drying of the washed cloth, altogether driven by a net of clotheslines and manual labor. It celebrates the act of cleaning oneself and one’s belongings, in a mise-en-scène of the workers of a concealed industry now presented on the runway.

LET YOUR CLOTHES RUN RINGS AROUND YOU.

The tactile textile movement through you, dear unwinding visitors, is underlined;

textually by research on the ZW’s history as well as by written tales,
spatially by projected digital and analogue visuals on topics of context and entropy,
musically by experimental DJ-sets of Zurich-based artists.

This setting allows, later in the evening, for detached dancing to wrap the performance in a playful way, to pollute once again what we have carefully cleaned together.

LET US DANCE.

The in:transcience collective consists of architecture-, fashion and art students who have, through different backgrounds, developed an interest in questions of belonging and domesticity. For the Waschnacht, we function as curators, musicians, washers and performers, visualizing and providing a space of thoughtful and diverse encounter, for one night.

14.4.23 // 20:00-03:00
ACT I: 21:30 // ACT II: 22:30 // ACT III: 00:00

xtf (aquatic ambient)
xtfxtf (post-club, hard ambient)
xtfxtfxtf (experimental, techno, ebm)
Geth (techno, ebm)
8500 PS (techno)