Time Leaks

For his first institutional solo exhibition in German-speaking Switzerland, alfatih works across the six rooms of the former tax office on the second floor of the Kunsthaus, which was once the town hall. The building is built on water: the River Langete flows beneath it. Its historic flood protection system and regular flooding earned the town the nickname Little Venice. The setting of the exhibition thus reflects the tension between planning and order on the one hand, and unforeseen elements that threaten to undermine them on the other. This tension also forms the basis of alfatih‘s new works, which have been created for the exhibition. Time Leaks is an investigation into the rules of games and what happens when their logic begins to falter. The author and philosopher Giorgio Agamben once described an opaque and unyielding machinery that influences and monopolises individuals in their everyday lives as an Apparatus – he includes everyday administrative processes and devices such as smartphones in this category. The behavioural patterns that arise as a result are familiar to most people, yet many are unable to find a conscious way of dealing with them. Similarly, alfatih‘s installations and interactive works repeatedly address the question of what motivates people – and, above all, how. At Kunsthaus Langenthal, he also plays with the perception and movement patterns of visitors, who in the meantime trigger the activation of individual works themselves. Among other things, the artist refers to a specific style of improvised role-playing known as LARP (short for Live Action Role Playing). In this form of play, which can also be situated within theatrical practice, players embody their own characters and go through different life or fantasy scenarios in groups – for fun and to gain new insights from abstract worlds. Even from a distance, a distinct ticking can be heard from the hallway on the second floor. The flow of sounds emanating from the work Time Leaks (2026) is precisely directed by a directional loudspeaker and envelops visitors as they enter the exhibition. Regardless of who the whispered words are directed at, they simultaneously imply an unintended audience. The video work The Secret to Tax Evasion, and Other Life Wisdom (2026), presented in a cupboard from the former department store‘s inventory, likewise deals with access to information and the wisdom of life that seems to be reserved for certain people. Here, a folded origami crane moves rhythmically in the currents of a river, accompanied by a narrative voice. It is a poetic guide on how to fold a crane from this year‘s tax documents from the canton of Bern, which can float on water without sinking. In a muted form, the narrative can also be followed through the closed cupboard doors. As with this transformation of bureaucratic obligations into humorous attempts to evade them, a playful approach to rigid structures finds its way into the exhibition in various ways. The solar-powered work Force Majeure (2026) forms a self-contained cycle that is delayed in relation to the weather in Langenthal – it only rains after sunny days. Similarly, the work Adagio for Fish (2026) responds to external stimuli that activate it. It is part of the artist‘s ongoing research into seemingly functioning systems in which input and output are not always clearly distinguishable. The talking fish appeared regularly as an attraction in living rooms and bars in the early 2000s and still occasionally give advice at the touch of a button, such as ‘Don‘t worry, be happy ’. In alfatih‘s work, this mechanism is corrupted and functions within an opaque system according to new standards. The impermanence of things and dogmas is also taken up in the work Untitled (2025), where universally valid truisms are reconfigured and relativised every second. Luck Must Forget All Your Time. You Will Forget Our Time. You Will Destroy Our Love. Based on the spinning displays of slot machines from the gambling industry, winning the jackpot beckons here as a way out of the rules of ordinary life. In a similar circular clockwise motion, the two projectors in the work Zero-Sum Game (2026) also rotate, their images decipherable from different rooms. The projected raw data of the exhibition’s digital control portal offers a fragmentary glimpse behind the scenes of the dispositif. The individual capacity to decipher nested information is facilitated by a color filter. In a game with intricate rules, visitors to the exhibition become actors and witnesses in a series of contexts. The title of the exhibition, Time Leaks, originates from an idiom for inefficient work processes and can be understood as a visual representation of an often unnoticed loss of time. In addition to the temporal overlap of nostalgic objects and visual references with technically sophisticated code in alfatih‘s new works, time is also visualised as a constant and unstoppable motor in circulating mechanisms such as water cycles, video projections and sound loops. Leakage as a disturbance of a signal is again reflected in the gaps between the individual rooms, in which activation triggers, images and sound interfere. The omnipresent image of water as an unpredictable and untameable element not only refers to the location of the Kunsthaus, but also appears in various places as a counterpoint to the rigid structures of bureaucracy. A recurring friction. Amidst humorous and playful moments, Time Leaks also interweaves cautionary elements of surveillance, intrusion and mistrust. The Apparatus , which is both revealed and obscured here in various forms, demands that its function be deciphered. At the centre is a reflection on tactical interdependence against systems of value extraction and fluid truths.