Zurich Load

The concept for Manifesta 11 (2016), “What People Do For Money”, hosted by the city of Zürich, was based on pairing an artist with a particular profession. Mike Bouchet had chosen to work with the city’s waste water treatment facility. His work for Manifesta 11 is titled “The Zurich Load” and Bouchet presented an 80 ton sculpture made of human sludge in the Migros Museum of Contemporary Art. The city of Zurich has a population of 400,000 people, and on average produces 80 tons of sludge per day. This collaborative sculpture is a literal display of one day of the citizen’s “production” and provided a renowned context for everyone to see what they collectively produced.