In Switzerland, a system of neutralization has long been at play, one that denies or downplays the country’s role in colonial violence and ongoing global exploitation. Against Neutrality! is a three-day collaborative artistic, ethnographic, and activist intervention that aims to deconstruct these processes and show Switzerland’s complicity in global economic and ecological violence.
A transdisciplinary group of artists, researchers, and students from the universities of Bern and Luzern will open up their research archives on commodity trade, energy imperialism, and conservation, engaging with audiences as well as national and international guests. Through talks, screenings, workshops, and social gatherings within a multimodal archive space, the event will activate knowledges, affects, and relations necessary to inhabit and build transnational worlds of resistance and solidarity.
All events will be in English. Admission to all events is free.
Project website of the University of Bern
PROGRAM SUNDAY
GLOBAL CONSERVATION
11 AM Networking Brunch at Grand Palais Bern
2 PM Talk by Prof. Tobias Haller (Uni Bern)
3 PM Research conversations by Alexandra Baumgartner and Antsa Arimalala
5 PM Closing
SATURDAY and SUNDAY from 11 AM until the end of the evening program: Additional opening of the Research Archives in Kunsthalle Bern and Grand Palais Bern.
Sunday’s session opens a space for dialogue between academics, activists and artists studying Swiss involvement in nature conservation projects.
After a networking brunch, social anthropologist and political ecologist Prof.
Tobias Haller (Uni Bern) addresses the audience with a critical toast on “Stop Making Sense ?! The Tragic Comedy of Nature Conservation and its Profiteers”.
Against the backdrop of these ethnographic insights, Alexandra Baumgartner and Antsa Arimalala engage in their ongoing research dialogue: In an exchange with members of the artist collective Groupe 50:50 strategies of transnational artistic collaborations and decolonial research practices are explored. In a research conversation with anthropologists and Malagasy activists, current political-ecological developments in Madagascar are addressed.
