SQUARE invites artists to develop creative interventions at HSG. In the Autumn Semester of 2022, three different art projects will be on show in the new HSG building, and the artists are involving the students and the St.Gallen public in part of their work on this. The series begins in November with the Canadian collective “Speculative Energy Futures”.

At the end of November, the Origen festival will then put on a dance performance in the SQUARE atrium. The dance evening is the closing event of a seminar on the topic of festival culture, during which HSG students will spend a week with the festival makers in the village of Riom in Graubünden Canton.

At the start of December, the internationally established Swiss video artist Mats Staub is finally expanding his long-term project “Feiertage” (“Holidays”) at the SQUARE. This asks HSG members and locals of St.Gallen questions about their lives that can only be answered with a number. A year later, the recordings are repeated and thus illustrate what can happen in the space of a year.

Energy is not just a technical problem
The Canadian project team “Speculative Energy Futures” consists of researchers from different disciplines as well as artists. Twelve of them are in the SQUARE as guests from 7 to 18 November. In a course that forms part of the HSG Contextual Studies programme, they will introduce the students to humanities issues surrounding the use of fossil fuels, including, for example, historical, social or cultural aspects.

“The core of this course is about profound energy competence. The students are expected to develop an understanding of energy as a social relationship and not just as a technical problem,” says Sheena Wilson, Professor of Media, Press Relations and Public Affairs and Humanities & Social Sciences at the Canadian University of Alberta. Wilson will teach the course in the SQUARE together with Natalie Loveless, Art Historian at the same university. “Ideally, this course will inspire the students to think about what a fair energy transition could mean,” says Wilson.

Art, design and awareness
In addition to the course, there are also plans for an exhibition in the SQUARE entitled “Unpacking Energy Transition: SEF Flux Kit Beta Tests”. “Among other things, the plan is to hang up several banners in the SQUARE's atrium, which will display dialogue- and thought-provoking text and image messages on the urgent topic of the energy transition”, says Wilson. Like all Artist in Residence projects, this one in the SQUARE is also accessible to the broader public.

SEF is also involving Oikos St.Gallen in the project and artwork on site. Oikos is one of more than 130 student societies at the HSG and is engaged in the topic of sustainability in business, society and in academic teaching. “We frequently pose ourselves the question of how we can generate visibility and awareness of sustainability, and art is an option that we at Oikos had not really tackled in the past,” says Oikos president Sandro Tissi. “This gives us all the more reason to look at how we can come into contact with this ‘Artists in Residence’ project, so that we can learn and experience how art and design can help to bring about change.”