Noël Hochuli

Noël Hochuli’s artistic practice focuses on places, living spaces, and the systems that shape them. Drawing on traces, materials, and observations, he creates site-specific installations that combine research with sculptural and process-oriented approaches. His works examine ecological, social, and material interactions, influenced in large part by his personal experience in construction and art production. By shifting perspective toward other life forms, his work questions human agency.

Reflections on Zahn der Zeit and Art Dock, Zürich:

How does context shape your artistic process?

Quite often I work site-specifically, in the sense that I start with a visit and some research into the context of the site. I want to learn while doing art. That's why I do it.
I want to know the circumstances, but not with the purpose of later educating the visitors. The research is an important basis for what happens afterward. I then move off, artistically, further away from the specific site, to combine what I've learned and seen with my own experiences and to work with the found materials - maybe it could be called a creative metabolism.
But I don't want to fully end up in fantasy; I see my practice as somehow dedicated to realism. In this case, I collected rubble and leftover materials from construction sites across the whole city over several weeks, mainly in the evenings.

How did Art Under Dock shape your Artwork?

The building and its fate inspired me to develop a project about the demolition in the highly
gentrified city of Zurich. I was looking for a home for more than a year.
For some time I experienced what it means to have no real home, no access to my belongings, and to abandon my artistic practice in the search for a flat. It creates a state of ghostly existence. I was less present, constantly occupied with this kind of existential need.
I was looking for an expression of this state, but also for a way of combining the other topics I
often address, such as working-class experience, queerness, and ecological concerns, which are all intertwined - especially with regard to construction sites.
Beyond that, it became clearer to me that this is also about a state in which the future isn't yet clear. When a process is underway, the end result isn't visible yet, and I wanted to show that as well, the moment of transformation, which can still turn out positively, but just as easily manifest missed opportunities, which is actually often the case in fast gentrification. And maybe it was
somehow saying goodbye to this building, which will be gone soon.