Exhibition / Oliver Ressler

A Film on Commodity Trading in Switzerland

THE VISIBLE AND THE INVISIBLE

June 13, 2014 - September 7, 2014

Summer break / guest program in August

Opening: June 12, 2014, 7 p.m.

Over the past years Switzerland has become the global center of commodity trading.

Although there is no state that trades more commodities than Switzerland, crude oil, copper, aluminum, coal or wheat for trade never enter Swiss territory. Despite its importance for Swiss and global economy, the overall knowledge about these transactions is limited.

The headquarters oft he commodity trading corporations that are among the largest companies in the world, are often located in the upper floors of office buildings in Geneva, a commodity hub, or as for Glencore, Xstrata in Zug, a tax haven.

The near invisibility in Switzerland is in strong opposition to the visible, often catastrophic impact that the mining and commodity trade has for people, the environment and the public structures in mining areas mainly located in the global South under neocolonial conditions.

Lecture on opening night

Thursday, June 12, 8 p.m.

Fort he first time the artist and filmmaker Oliver Ressler will present his new co-production of the Shedhalle movie "The Visible and the Invisible“ to the public.

The lecture relates the current film to his previous work: "5 Factories - Worker Control in Venezuela" (2006), a collaboration with Dario Azzellini and a six-channel video installation, discusses various forms of collaboration and self organization based on expieriences in five large companies in Venezuela.

Social production companies no longer export solely commodities but produce also higher quality products in the country to generate more revenue for it inhabitants.

The work "235000000000 / 777.000.000.000.000" (2006) for the large electronic billboard at the Zurich Hauptbahnhof, that was part of an exhibition at the Shedhalle connects Africa's external debt with those damages colonialism and slavery have produced there. "Leave It in the Ground" (2013) discusses the climate crisis that is generated by burning the fossil fuels as a political problem. Oil is the most important commodity, whose trade is mostly conducted in the commodity hub Geneva.