Surrounding spatial structures play a role in on our everyday life. Hamlet, our exhibition program and research endeavor, located at Dörflistrasse 67, is at the heart of the two-faced Zurich-Oerlikon; at the border of the old village center and the fully paper-visioned Neu-Oerlikon and Glattpark, expanding at a dizzying speed to this day.
With a sequence of different research endeavors and interventions we want to describe, explore and analyze different phenomena of urban life, urbanization and its role on people’s everyday life.
In the initial phase, a catalogue of topics will be gathered, along which further research shall be conducted. The collected topics should be in regard to issues, observations and changes brought by the changes in the surrounding of the people living in Oerlikon and will also be prepared and compiled through interviews, surveying, canvassing and other interaction.
From the catalogue subtopics and questions will be derived an developed which then will become the subject focus during different events involving near-by residents. One of the possible settings in which discussions can be placed is the barber shop: With this project we want to invite the village-talk to Hamlet by setting up a local hair salon at the heart of our exhibition space. Participants – usual clients, guests and experts – are invited to get a free haircut and talk about Oerlikon. We hope to create a setting that makes people comfortably talk about how they experience everyday life and the changes happening in Oerlikon, and urbanization in general.
The feedback by participants will be documented and compiled in order to develop a concise overview over time and support an understanding of the effects of urban development in the specific case of Zurich-Oerlikon.