Kino Cameo | Events | Wednesday, 01.12.2021, 19:00–21:15

Screening and Talk: State Fiction. Neutral Only On the Outside

Since 2014, artist and researcher Denise Bertschi has been exploring the Swiss Army’s ‘Korea Collection’. It comprises film recordings and photographs taken by Swiss soldiers and officers stationed at the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea from 1953 on. As part of a neutral UN supervisory commission, the Swiss military was tasked with monitoring the armistice agreement between North and South Korea. Their small ‘Swiss island’ in the middle of a geopolitically conflict-ridden zone and the practices of their image production form the starting point of Bertschi’s critical research. The experimental documentary State Fiction weaves together its narrative entirely from archival material, juxtaposing Super 8 film footage with sound recordings and voiced diary entries.

Through a montage fraught with tension, the myth of Swiss neutrality is deconstructed while the ‘colonial gaze’ becomes palpable in the encounter with the ‘other’.

After the screening, Denise Bertschi and Sophie Junge from the Institute of Art History at the University of Zurich will talk about Bertschis artistic practice and address questions around the research with image archives, the complexity of the photographic gaze and the role of image production in the construction of images of ‘self’ and ‘other’. Also present is Ramon Landolt (Zurich), who produced the film music for State Fiction. Moderated by Doris Gassert, Research Curator Fotomuseum Winterthur.

The film is German/French with English subtitles.
The event takes place in German.

Admission: CHF 16.– (reduced CHF 13.– and for members CHF 10.-)

Subject to change due to the current situation.

A cooperation between Fotomuseum Winterthur, Kino Cameo and Asia Society Switzerland.