To celebrate this presence, Pro Helvetia hosted The Terms of Engagement in the month of September 2018 in Johannesburg to showcase the fruits of intercultural exchange and transnational collaboration that has been taking place in the past two decades.
Funded by the Government of Switzerland, Pro Helvetia plays an important role of promoting cultural exchange between Switzerland and other parts of the world including Southern Africa.
In addition, Pro Helvetia also works directly with the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), on a regional arts and culture programme that is promoting South-to-South cooperation among artists in the sixteen countries in the Southern African Development Community (SADC).
Through the SDC programme, both long and short-term transnational partnerships have been established across the African continent, while supporting and promoting Swiss arts and culture at the same time.
Over the last 20 years, Pro Helvetia has been offering different artistic practitioners —fine artists, musicians, authors, artists, researchers and curators — opportunities to cultivate their craft by providing various platforms for research, outreach, and exchange of knowledge with other artists.
In Southern Africa, Swiss presence started in 1998 when a camp was set up in Cape Town to facilitate an international exchange of arts and culture with Swiss artists. Through Pro Helvetia, Switzerland believes arts and culture have the power to develop intercultural exchange, connect remote communities and expand the reach of artists. It is for this reason that collaboration especially through the ANT Mobility Project became one of its major keystones.
Joseph Gaylard, the head of Pro Helvetia Johannesburg, said during the celebrations that: “At a sort of macro level, I think that we live in [such] an increasingly connected world that it makes sense for people in the same field — whether in law, engineering, finance — to be working across different national contexts generally more and more. And because there’s a significant part of the arts that isn’t necessarily driven by emotional interest, there’s a need for external support. I think organisations like Pro Helvetia and art councils in general can play an important role in making those sorts of transnational collaborations possible in the arts.”
As far as the arts and culture are concerned, Switzerland is mainly interested in what the agendas of the artists are: What they want to do and not what Switzerland wants them to do?
Switzerland does this through a number of programmes and funds. These facilitate new networks, research and residencies, of the artist’s or art organisation’s choice.
In the context of the celebrations, artists and participants from more than 20 cities in Africa and Switzerland came together in Johannesburg in South Africa to showcase 20 years of interdisciplinary and transnational networking through presentations, symposia, music, visual arts, theatre and exhibitions. A number of these artists were from Zimbabwe.
One of the major highlights of the Terms of Engagement was a collaboration by both Zimbabwean and Swiss artists and also an incredible show by Swiss artist Denise Bertschi’s – an installation about Neutrality as an Agent. Through the installation, Bertschi asked what role Switzerland plays in foreign affairs and how the country’s national identity of political neutrality is a strategy used to conceal uncomfortable histories and realities regarding its role in the global political landscape.
