Commissioner: Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia (Madeleine Schuppli, Sandi Paucic, Rachele Giudici Legittimo)
Curators/Exhibitors: Fabrice Aragno, Mounir Ayoub, Vanessa Lacaille, Pierre Szczepski
Switzerland
Oræ – Experiences on the Border
Album
Description
Oræ is a Latin word synonymous with borders, designating the boundary of something, and figuratively speaking its ‘beginning’. If globalised metropolises have been the favourite playground of the twentieth century, borders are the laboratory of the political, social, and economic phenomena of the twenty-first century. Border inhabitants, left to their own devices, have been thrust into the contemporary world in its most violent form of oppression. The territory of the border lacks a political project, and to carry out this project we asked border inhabitants to describe and imagine their living space. A collective intelligence took form. Oræ is a project of a territory; both imaginary and real, its place is the borders, its actors those living within, its political and poetic programme inhabiting the contemporary world starting from its margins.
Biennale Sneak Peek
Biennale Sneak Peek
Image 1 – How will we live together?
Oræ is a project of a territory, whose site is its borders and whose authors are its inhabitants. Oræ, plural of the Latin noun ora, translates as “borders” in English. Figuratively speaking, it signifies “the beginning of something”.
Photo: Mobile forum in Pratteln, 2021. © Swiss Pavilion’s team
Image 2 – Sneak peek of the project
We asked those living on the borders to describe, imagine and build a project based upon their experiences of the territory in which they live. Over two years, hundreds of them devoted themselves to this. A “collective intelligence” took shape. That which is on the margin becomes the beginning of something: an inhabited territory.
Photo: Making Models in the Geneva’s studio, 2020. © Swiss Pavilion’s team