Foot Baths for All

Julia Weber

The artistic intervention "Foot Baths for All" (2024) emerged from an ethnographic exploration of collective forms of life on wastelands in Switzerland. Ethnographic insights regarding self-organized care, occupation, informal infrastructure, gift economies, and the shared use of water and electricity were fictionalized and recontextualized in the inner city of Zurich, in order to explore new forms of appropriation and participation in urban life. This exposition aims to share the results and experiences of this research through multiple formats: a video documentation, a how-to guide, and a text that offers insights into the ethnographic research and its translation into an artistic intervention, conceptualizing "Foot Bath Urbanism" as an artistic method for city-making from below. This project is situated in the field of artistic urban research. It is based on an expanded notion of art that moves beyond institutional contexts to intervene directly in public urban spaces through installations and performative practices, following approaches such as “New Genre Public Art”. The how-to guide is connected to instruction-based art, challenging conventional notions of authorship while emphasizing accessibility, participation, and interactivity, rooted in the conceptual art of the 1960s and 1970s, including the Fluxus movement.

Research: Julia Weber & Mayumi Arai
Context Foot Bath Urbanism: Julia Weber (text)
How-to Guide Foot Bath for All: Mayumi Arai (images) & Julia Weber (text)
Exposition Layout: Nicola Todeschini

Publication funded by IfCAR-Grant of the Institute for Contemporary Art, Department of Fine Arts, Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK), Switzerland.
Research project Urban Wastelands as Ambiguous Spaces for Appropriation and Participation funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF).

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Julia Weber, Mayumi Arai - Foot Baths for All - 2025