Two Protaganists
Fragments of the Subterranean is an audiovisual piece that brings two subterranean protagonists, a bunker and a river together.
No.1: Bunkers
Bunkers have traditionally played an important role in ideologically and materially preserving and embodying the ‘neutral’ social and political identity of Switzerland. In addition to an extensive network of fortifications most evident in the estimated 8000 military bunkers spread throughout Switzerland1Franklin, Joshua, Wiegmann, Arnd. 2016. A room without a view: second life for Swiss army bunkers. Reuters.https://www.reuters.com/article/us-swiss-bunkers-widerimage-idCAKBN0UL1I220160107., the rise of Cold War nuclear tension led to the construction of 370,000 nuclear shelters (abris de protection – abris PC – shelters) to secure every household in the country.2Allen, Matthew . 2023. Why the Swiss army is reviving its old bunker mentality. Swiss Info.https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/politics/why-the-swiss-army-is-reviving-its-old-bunker-mentality/48821586. While today some of these bunkers have been sold to private entrepreneurs for facilities such as hotels, museums, or mushroom farms, they have also been mobilized by the Swiss state to “host” asylum seekers.
In 2005, the Housing Commission of Geneva’s ‘Grand Council’ investigated the ways in which asylum seekers were being housed in these nuclear bunkers. After interviewing social workers and asylum seekers – mainly from Kosovo – they concluded that past traumas (from torture, imprisonment, war and more) were exacerbated by the stress of living in these underground bunkers, especially for indefinite periods, as well as leading to a loss of day-night reality.
Yet, in early 2024, two underground civil protection bunkers were reopened in order to house asylum seekers, despite having been closed six years earlier following a “Stop Bunkers” campaign.3Feijoo, Elodie. 2023. Des requérant·es d’asile à nouveau logé·es dans des abris PC à Genève. Asile.ch. https://asile.ch/2024/01/16/ouverture-dabris-pc/
No.2: The Drize River
The Drize River is an underground river that flows from France to Switzerland.
In early 2024, construction work began to bring 450 meters of the Drize River to the surface: the first stage of a major river ‘renaturation’ project. Since the start of the project, articles have flooded the news with statements about how the river will bring fresh air, support biodiversity, and encourage interaction between local residents.4Frischknecht, Lea. 2024. La Drize Pourra Bientôt Passer Sous La Route Des Acacias.
Making Thinkable Subterranea
Both the bunkers and the river embody underground spaces. Determining what can be seen and what cannot, swallowing the presumed ‘threat’ of migrants in the depth of bunkers, while recuperating, recovering, and re-valuing the underground river Drize. Fragments from the Subterranean explores the politics of these subterranean spaces to hear the voices and echoes of those that are often muted or rendered invisible through material and political obscurity.
To explore these two underground protagonists, we draw on a ‘counterpoint’ approach, which involves:
First, the complicating of a single or dominant theme through the addition of contrasting themes or forces; it undoes a monolithic element through the multiplication of elements. Second, counterpoint sets off or articulates a thematic by means of contrast or juxtaposition; it highlights dominance through a kind of reverse othering.5Brown, Wendy. 2002. At the Edge. See also Farocki, Harun, dir. 2009. Serious Games.
The logic of a counterpoint analysis is, in the musical sense, to open up to the independence of voices: each voice must be melodically interesting and autonomous. No voice should dominate the others. Such a logic also plays with consonance (harmonious chords) and dissonance (harmonic tensions). Following this, to make the subterranean thinkable means developing an awareness of the limits of dominant scopic regimes (e.g. typically looking at the subterranean from the top) and how such limits can be reversed, adjusted, transformed.6Smirl, Lisa. 2016.‘Not Welcome at the Holiday Inn’: How a Sarajevan Hotel Influenced Geo-Politics. It also involves thinking with the volumetric: how the experience of depths – upward and downward movements – are erased from classic spatial representations, such as maps.7Elden, Stuart. 2013. Secure the Volume: Vertical Geopolitics and the Depth of Power. Above all, it is about making thinkable the experiences of others – asylum seekers, or the river – directly impacted by the politics of underground confinement.
Making the Fragments Material
Fragments from the Subterranean materializes its investigations as a collection of fragments, represented visually as a short film. On top of the Drize underground tunnel, still-shot footage intertwines with audio fragments. The river meets the bunker, and asylum seekers’ testimonies confront locals’ assumptions about the ‘refugee crisis’. The story of the river is narrated in parallel, triggering visual metaphors through unexpected sound and visual combinations. The lack of physical access we encountered while producing the film represents the tensions around this topic. The ex-asylum-seekers we interviewed helped give voice to others, sharing their feedback on the editing of the video and actively contributing to the piece. Still, we acknowledge that every asylum experience is unique. Equally, we paid particular attention to minimizing the exposure of asylum seekers whose claims are currently being processed and the perceived threat of misappropriation of the video by ongoing far-right anti-immigration campaigns.
Making Containment Public
While Fragments from the Subterranean uses the river as a metaphor for migration politics, it simultaneously provides a concrete lens to rethink the ‘colossal’ urban initiative of recovering the Drize River from the underground. The positive discourse around its ‘renaturation – how it will ‘bring fresh air to the inhabitants’, become a ‘response to climate change challenges’, a ‘means for soft mobility’ and a ‘central element of public space’ – often lacks a counterpoint allowing us to see dynamics of tokenistic politics, which at times underscores such urban projects. Indeed, the Drize, and its speculative effects on the urban development project, flow as a fluid through the planning process, making it crucial to consider as its own analytical case.
Project Details
Fragments of the Subterranean forms part of the Future of Humanitarian Design research project. A first version, under the form of a short movie, was created during the course, “Art and Design Methods for the Social Sciences” at the Geneva Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in the Spring 2024.
Many thanks to:
- Munia Hassoun
- Shyiar Mahmod
- Marine Pernet et Alain Dupraz – Association 3ChêneAccueil
Project Leads:
- Maevia Griffiths
- Nora Doukkali
- Damien Greder
- Ila Schoop Rutten