Ronald Kolb
Post-Exhibitionary Practice

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https://frohussicht.ch/expanded-fields/ronald-kolb

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Ronald Kolb, “Practices of Handing Over. Übertragungen und Aushandlungen von Zukunfts-Traditionen”, June 2026

Text contribution to the exhibition Expanded Fields
Samstagern, Switzerland, 27 June–27 September 2026
No ISBN
Unpaginated
https://frohussicht.ch/expanded-fields

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Written for TRADIcTION at Hof Blum, an organic farm-turned-exhibition-space in Samstagern, the essay argues tradition — from tradere, „to hand over“ — is never fixed preservation but ongoing translation. Swiss agricultural „tradition“ (dairy cows, cheese cooperatives, chocolate) is shown to be itself a product of 19th-century industrialization and colonial trade, not an unbroken rural past — a repertoire renegotiated every season, not inherited whole, though it can also harden into naturalized political identity, as in Swiss right-wing agrarian imagery.

Drawing on Haraway’s „staying with the trouble“ and Tsing’s concept of „friction“ — culture produced through unequal encounters rather than smooth continuity — Kolb reframes the future as becoming rather than a fixed destination, with Hof Blum as a site where local farming and global economic history collide productively, and art’s role is to introduce useful friction rather than beautify. Its closing claim: tradition isn’t the opposite of the future, but one of the ways it comes into being.