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neutral background

2021
video
00:10:44, 16:9, HD, stereo
video link

2021
2-channel video installation
00:57:59, HD, stereo

"Notational System on Neutral Background" evolves from expanded ongoing research on problematic entanglements of Swiss economic policies. Swiss mythologies and self-identifications of neutrality and innocence still (partly) persist when it comes to discussions of colonial histories and racism. Strong economic involvements, be it in the transatlantic slave trade, or, more recently, human rights violations on behalf of global corporations, have been overlooked. This research focuses on such global involvements, and asks how Swiss policymaking is involved. In developing an index or cartographic vocabulary, I aim to transform sheer information into readable diagrams, maps, calendars, or network structures. This vocabulary helps render complex facts visually accessible, and makes the said entanglements clearer in terms of structure, form, pattern and rootedness within the system.
– text by Tirdad Zolghadr


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2020
wallpapers
dimensions mutable

The series of wallpapers show the development of a visual vocabulary in order to render those rather complex facts of economic policies visually accessible. It particularly attempts the problematic entanglements to become clear in terms of their structure-form, repetition and deep-rootedness in the system. The repetitive forms of power structures in trajectories of colonial and post-colonial relationships become motives for a first outcome: a series of wallpapers, the drawings/maps/network structures being its pattern. The patterns use a unified vocabulary of symbols and forms, but is not directly repetitive as wallpapers usually are. Instead it attempts to transform as much of the research information readable, including indexes.