Institutions as Semantic Forms: Examples of Self-Organized Practices in Switzerland

With reference to different examples of self-organized Swiss art projects, this article highlights how the ‘institution’—especially Kunsthallen—can be a (literal) infrastructure for running a project. As such, institutions act more as semantic forms. However, this does not mean that they are merely simulated or faked, but rather that these semantic forms serve as vessels for artistic ends of social connections and imagination of production, which ultimately create something concerned with institutional imagination