Sonnendeck, Rosengarten, WC Welle-7

Sonnendeck, Rosengarten, WC Welle-7—a group exhibition and its accompanying program—is dedicated to the magic of the city. What is it about the city that gives rise to such mesmerising encounters? The project traces the often ephemeral and fleeting intimacy that emerges in cities and asks how it relates to specific urban infrastructures. Take, for example, the three eponymous locations—they exist right here in Bern, yet point beyond the city at the same time. They are places of leisure and dwelling, and places where desire unfolds and sexual encounters take place. To what extent are these encounters structured and regulated by the built environment? And conversely, how do they themselves produce city and space—often in defiance of defensive architecture or in neglected places? Some of the historical and contemporary works on display, in fact, appropriate defensive architecture. They ask who has a place in the city and how queer, migrant, and poor communities are displaced from it. At the same time, these works reveal cunning and wayward solutions that people develop to continually create space for themselves. Looking at such examples, the project seeks to bring together practices of social encounter where sexuality and alternative forms of community intersect. It is an invitation to explore and experience the city as a place of varied, pleasurable interactions.