Diana
Lira
KULTUR
BORDELL
There is a type of work that doesn't produce an obvious output. No object, no deliverable, no single name in the credits. It operates through connection, context, and a particular kind of attention — to what's missing in a room, to who should be talking to whom, to the moment when something could shift if someone made it possible.
That is, more often than not, what I do.
I'm Diana Lira. I work at the intersection of art, culture, science, and the operational structures that hold creative work together or prevent it from existing at all. I think in ecosystems. I've spent fifteen years learning to read context — across galleries, institutions, private collections, international art fairs, and the more informal architectures of intellectual and cultural life in Zürich and beyond.
I hold two master's degrees from ZHdK — Transdisciplinary Studies in the Arts and Curatorial Studies — and a BSc in Biology, which turned out to be the most useful degree of the three.
Kultur Bordell is the framework I built for this practice. It is not an agency in any conventional sense. It is a position — from which I write, consult, produce, and connect.
I write. I run Out of the Circle, a salon series at Cabaret Voltaire. And I work — on projects, with people, and on the things that don't have a name yet.
My Substack
My substack, is where the thinking goes that doesn't fit anywhere else. Essays on the art world, portraits of people worth paying attention to, observations from inside a practice that crosses too many fields to have a single name.
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Drag Queens should rule the world
What the queens of the Stonewall era did was take those ideas off the gallery wall and into the street. Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera were not performing when they fought back in 1969. They were resisting — with their bodies, in public, at enormous personal risk while wearing a crown of flowers. The sequins were never just sequins.
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10 things I love about Ben Moore
I met Ben a few years ago after he gave a brilliant talk. His humor hit me first, then obviously his brain. That night we ended up forming a bit of a group — Artur Avila was part of it, the whiskey thief I ended up dating for a while afterward. One of those evenings where your mind gets rewired while you’re laughing nonstop.
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Let’s talk about Women’s Health
A few years ago, I attended a talk about AI with my friend Nico was a speaker. Next to him was Lisa Falco, who began her talk by saying, "As a hardcore feminist..." and immediately, I knew I had to follow and learn from her.
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Who’s hot in Paradeplatz
Paradeplatz, the heart of Zurich's financial district, is a world-renowned hub where major banks and countless financial offices operate. So much money changes hands here that it's impossible to imagine—and thanks to the famed Swiss discretion, we'll never know the full extent of it. This is anyway not what interests us.
