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Are you planning to play music, act or perform some other artistic activity in public? If you are, please observe the following rules:

Take an excavator to your local park. Tear open the lawn. Strip everything to its guts – uncover the chords (1) of electricity and water, connecting street lamps, houses, fountains, factories.

Artistic performances are permitted only in certain areas of the city and only at certain times. Please note the following points, in particular:

You’re probably approaching some sort of decora-girl-cyborgs. Some skinned animatronics, their wiry organs and rigid skeleton exposed. Over time, junk has coagulated in their bodies.

In moments of moving places, things become stuff, junk and things again. You’re dissecting the stuff in your basement – to discover things and things of things. The word thing derived from meeting, assembly, an appointed time (a thing is official). Over time the term shifted, it started instead to describe the individual items up for discussion at the assembly. The „thing“ went from being the meeting to the purpose of the meeting, thus it could become any abstract thing. A confusion of terms. Terminal confusion.

It is forbidden…

to sell or trade goods.
to paint pictures on the ground.
to request money for performances; the passive collection of money is permitted (for example, by means of a hat on the ground).

Thankfully, coolness is not inheritable. Evolution is random. It doesn’t care what is needed. That’s why there is always a spark of uncertainty of reproducing towards extinction. There’s no such thing as teleology.

A landfill of burnt textile too faulty to sell. Sweatshop elegance is the production of destruction. Meanwhile factory workers create synchronized working-beats in wannabe gratifying TikToks.

to use amplifiers, stands or other aids.
to stay for more than 30 minutes at any one place.

Scrolling through clickbait thumbnails of forgotten vlogs from 2016. The red circle changed its function of highlighting to becoming the highlight itself (pointing attention to blurry nothingness). Recently the news was trending, scientists created the first ever human made wormhole – a miniature wormhole inside a quantum computer. It turned out they merely created a representation of it – a sketch. As lame as it sounds, this is some real Magritte type of thing. Facts can’t be other than an interpretation of data.

to obstruct traffic (including public transport customers).
to play music or perform artistic activities when other events approved by the city are taking place (such as markets, festivals, stand promotions and street cafés).

A street performer infecting you with an earworm – connecting her and you, as you go about your day. The power of bringing people together. Parties, Musicals, Dance battles in the streets, a child playing a drum kit made of trash. The TikTok-option of viewing all the videos that use the same sound. Revealing a muddy network. The impossibility to find some sort of international anthem.

You could be fined for failing to abide by these rules.
We look forward to your performances! (2)

Etienne Eisele


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(1) The OED explains that cord meaning „rope or string made of twisted threads“ is a „16th cent. refashioning“ of CHORD n.1 from Latin chorda. On the other hand, chord meaning „agreement of musical sounds“ is originally cord, aphetic form of ACCORD n., q.v.; the 17th cent. spelling chord arose from confusion with CHORD n.1“ (which of course is what we now mostly spell „cord“).

(2) Stadt Zürich – Department of Security: https://www.stadt-zuerich.ch/pd/de/index/stadtpolizeizuerich/ bewilligungeninformationen/planung/strassenkunst/english (19.11.23)


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bleed is the collaborative practice of artists Nilz Källgren and Wilf Speller. Their work spans writing, video, sound, sculpture, painting, installation, destruction, and performance. Challenging the material boundaries of self and environment, they explore the aesthetics and affects of psychopolitical alienation and resulting coping mechanisms, in search for new methods of unity in survival.

With the generous support of Dr. Georg und Josi Guggenheim-Stiftung and Susanne und Martin Knechtli-Kradolfer-Stiftung