2 minute read
The Swiss Way: noticing as an act of re-construction
Lukmanier Line, Swiss Alps. 2021.
The Swiss Way or Weg der Schweiz is a series of connected paths, each designed by one of the 26 Swiss Cantons, circling the southern half of Lake Uri. The creation of the path in 1991 was the main event celebrating 700 years of the Swiss Confederation. Georges Descombes famously designed the Geneva section, as a way to deconstruct the solidified, official history of a nation and give the possibility of imagining another.
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As Georges Descombes states “The ‘Swiss Way’ itself was moving.” (“How to Make a Path: The Swiss Way Project, 1991” 2020). This project explores this shift within the context of the Europeanization of Swiss Energy policy and it’s symbolic and physical repercussions.
Descombes, Georges. “How to Make a Path: The Swiss Way Project, 1991.” In Thinking the Sculpture Garden, 1st ed., 140–55. Routledge, 2020. https://doi. org/10.4324/9780429199882-8
Animation still. Detailing the origin of Italy’s 2003 Blackout originating on the Lukmanier Line in Switzerland.
Following the Lukmanier powerline, the origin of Italy’s 2003 Blackout and cause of the change in power structure, the path reframes the Swiss Way, making tangible the intangible. It investigates the ‘hidden’ elements of a power landscape through sensory instruments that distill and direct attention.
Sound auras, created from three aspects: frequency, amplitude and emotion.
Listening instruments positioned to redirect attention along the new Swiss Way.
Listening instruments positioned to redirect attention along the new Swiss Way.
Listening instruments positioned to redirect attention along the new Swiss Way.
We as humans constantly edit and filter through what we see, hear and feel, this is the same with our stories and identities. The path as an object, is itself an investigation, reaching outwards towards the border, traversed by both tourists and Swiss. The path’s designation as the 27th segment places the industrial landscape at both the local and global scale on equal ground with the histories of the pastoral landscapes.
