VERGANGENHEIT IM VORGARTEN.
Die Panzersperre als Relikt.
Museum Forum Schlossplatz, Aarau.

Vergangenheit im Vorgarten. Die Panzersperre als Relikt examines the material legacy of Cold War defence strategies in Switzerland, focusing on tank barriers originally conceived as instruments of territorial protection. Although no longer operative, these structures persist across the landscape as silent remnants whose original function has disappeared, while their presence remains unresolved.

The exhibition approaches the Panzersperre as a relic rather than as a military artefact. Once detached from its defensive role, the barrier shifts status: from infrastructure to residue, from functional object to carrier of historical and symbolic meaning. Embedded in front yards, road edges, and marginal urban spaces, these elements form part of the everyday environment while remaining largely unread.

The project operates by translating this latent condition into the symbolic and mediatic field of the exhibition. Through spatial arrangements, archival materials, and artistic contributions, the exhibition reframes the tank barriers not as instruments of defence but as historical markers and cognitive traces of a geopolitical past that continues to shape the present.

The spatial layout draws on the architectural axes of Forum Schlossplatz. Metaphorical “lines of fire” structure the visitor’s trajectory, not to simulate military action, but to articulate distance, alignment, and obstruction as experiential conditions. In this way, movement through the exhibition replaces linear narration, allowing historical, political, and affective layers to surface through bodily encounter.

Archival documents and contemporary artworks are brought into relation within this framework. Rather than offering an exhaustive historical account, the exhibition constructs a field in which memory, symbolism, and perception coexist as layered conditions. The museum becomes a site where the persistence of military infrastructures is not explained away, but held open for reflection.

The project was developed with contributions by Frédéric Dedelley, Anna Froelicher, Simon Graf, Barbara Kiener, Lithic Alliance, Bertilla Spinas, Gabi Vogt, and Florian Wegelin.
Curated by Barbara Ruf and Sönke Gau.

The exhibition is part of a research project supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation and led by Simon Graf at the Zurich University of the Arts.

Expose — obsolete defensive structures are repositioned within a symbolic and mediatic field, allowing their historical and cognitive dimensions to become legible.

Mediate — spatial and curatorial arrangements enable the transfer of historical and geopolitical knowledge through perception and experience rather than explanation.

Activate — the original defensive function of the tank barriers is transposed into a monumentale, historical, and symbolic role, reactivating them as objects of reflection rather than instruments of defence.