Abstract

Slender yet densely packed with images, this 44-page publication presents items discovered during an artistic research project that investigated various relationships between Swiss people and the South African apartheid regime in the 1980s and 1990s. Advertisements and articles from the magazine of a Swiss social and sports club in Cape Town, printed on full pages and mostly collaged, offer insight into the activities and attitudes of the Swiss exile community. These alternate with pages featuring individual framed photographs of anti-apartheid demonstrations in Switzerland taken in the 1980s by Gertrud Vogler (1936–2018). Despite its slenderness, the publication gives the impression of in-depth research and distilled results – for instance when racist words or depictions appear on the banners of the anti-apartheid demonstrations. The club newsletter format and its aesthetic are transposed into a bold new object with the use of minimal design resources. The publication is part of a larger artistic project on the ambivalences of Swiss foreign policy. The method of image research adopted here is one that may well prove productive in other cases as well.

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