In the 1970's and '80's, the Swiss artist Heidi Bucher summoned a future that we only now are beginning to grasp. Her latex skinning actions and sculptures promised emancipation from patriarchy and the social body politic, and at the same time were fertile sites of ‘magical transfer’ to as-yet-unimagined worlds. Curator and art historian Chus Martínez helps us locate the ‘underground rivers’ of Heidi Bucher’s creative practice, the realms of techno-fantasy she inhabited far ahead of her time, and the keys she may have been leaving to decrypt some future reality—perhaps with the help of AI’s.

Martínez also shares about about her role as head of Institute Art Gender Nature at the FHNW Academy of Art and Design, the importance of artists and artworks as 'monsters' to disrupt capitalist forces, and about love and generosity as drivers of freedom.

image: Photographic documentation of the skinning process of Gentlemen’s Study (Herrenzimmer), Winterthur-Wülflingen, 1978/ Photo by Hans-Peter Siffert, courtesy of The Estate of Heidi Bucher  https://heidibucher.com/

This season of AI Murmurings is generously sponsored by The Resonance Foundation. Music by Christopher Tignor. Audio engineering by Fabian Reichle.