HALBMAST
Performance
2024

The national flag in the Swiss village of Tschiertschen is flown at half-mast in a performance by local resident Anna Willi. After a public procession leading to the top of the hill, a protocolary gesture with a high symbolic value is being transgressed. It is carried out by a person who has no official authority, for no reason known to the public and without any particular event motivating it. The action is a reappropriation of an institutional gesture by a member of civil society and questions the legitimacy of a person committing such an action. As well as questioning the unifying value of a national symbol, the performance raises concepts such as the individual's sense of belonging to a nation, their position in society, their integration, their role in it and their freedom to act. HALBMAST turns state authority into a simple gesture, usually reserved, into a civic act.

Performer: Anna Willi
Curator: Annina Pandiani and Luciano Fasciati
The performance takes place in the frame of the exhibition DA_SEIN,Beaux Losanges [→]
with Remo Albert Alig · Florian Bach · Luka Jana Berchtold · Dario Cavadini · Duri Collenberg · Jul Dillier · Nicolas Fournier · Sophie Germanier · Patrick Kessler / dieb13 · Isabelle Krieg - Alexandra Meyer,

Photo: Andrea Badrutt