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Vampire City, an artist coined the term a decade ago while visiting Zurich. I forgot who. The term stayed. That was the point, Zurich, vampire.
Today, Zurich has become one of the most perfectly functioning capitalist cities. Like a Swiss watch, everything runs smoothly. Infrastructure, finance, logistics, culture. It is difficult to find the glitches, but they exist.
Vampire City.
Because the city extracts.
Because it absorbs.
Because it takes from you constantly, quietly, efficiently.
Money, energy, attention.
She arrives in the city. Taking the S-Bahn from the airport brings her to the main station. From there it is a short walk to the hotel. She was here a week ago to install the exhibition. Tonight is the opening. She carries her outfit in a bag. The plan is simple: shower, change, a glass of champagne. But she already knows it will not happen like that. She stays inside.
She feels like the figure in Against the Grain by Joris-Karl Huysmans. A character who dreams of movement but constructs an entire artificial world instead. A private environment of images, smells, references, no outside, only simulation. The medication helps and eventually she leaves, enters the city, becomes part of it. A vampire among vampires. Moving between openings, dinners, conversations. Parks, galleries, bars. Recognition, circulation, presence. And still there is a weight, a quiet sense that something is ending. It becomes harder to make art, harder to meet, harder to speak about art and even harder to look at work that reflects this condition. This is not escapism. The work shifts, towards abstraction, towards something less direct. An attempt to capture the present without illustrating it. To move forward, to find a way out, because the system we operate in no longer allows us to imagine alternatives easily. Even utopias feel regulated, managed, neutralised and yet this capacity remains essential. To imagine otherwise, to overcome oneself. There is no simple belief left in progress, not in the sense that the human is inherently good. The human is contradictory, dark and light, cold and warm, violent and caring. These poles are always in tension. Right now the darker one feels stronger. Too much concentration of wealth, too much imbalance. She drinks the champagne and steps into the city. Vampire.
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