State Fictions Between Switzerland and Korea

Fri 02 Oct 2026, 6:30 - 8 p.m. at the Asia Society Switzerland, Mühlebachstrasse 20, 8008 Zurich


A field of flowers. A picnic. Mountains in the distance. Many photographs taken by Swiss soldiers on the Korean Peninsula could almost be mistaken for holiday snapshots. Yet they were created in one of the most high-risk landscapes to this day: the Demilitarized Zone dividing the Korean Peninsula. 

Since 1953, Switzerland has maintained a military presence there as part of the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission. Over the following decades, Swiss soldiers documented everyday life, encounters in North and South Korea, and the landscape around them. What do these images reveal about the two Koreas, and what do they tell us about Switzerland? 

For more than a decade, Swiss artist and scholar Prof. Dr. Denise Bertschi has explored this visual archive through her long-term project STATE FICTION. Her work examines what the soldiers chose to see, what remained outside the frame, and how their photographs intersect with Switzerland’s self-image as a neutral actor on the international stage. In 2026, Bertschi brings this research back to South Korea with State Fictions. Beyond Blossoms and Borders, presented at the first Swiss Pavilion commissioned by Pro Helvetia for the 16th Gwangju Biennale. The exhibition turns the historical material into a living archive, inviting Korean audiences to respond to, question, and add new perspectives to images created decades earlier. 

Who holds the camera, what remains invisible, and what changes when an archive returns to the place where it was created? 

At this Talk at the Library, Bertschi is joined by Prof. Dr. Susann Ahn, Professor of Landscape Architecture and Landscape Planning at TU Wien, and Prof. Dr. Da Hyung Jeong, Assistant Professor of the History of Art and Architecture at Pennsylvania State University. Both contributed to the book State Fictions. Beyond Blossoms and Borders, which will be at the center of the conversation. Drawing on Ahn’s research into Seoul, landscape, memory, and cultural narratives and Jeong’s work on architecture, ideology, and imperialism in postwar Asia, they will explore what these photographs reveal about Korea, Switzerland, and the histories and perspectives embedded in the archive.

This event is hosted in collaboration with Pro Helvetia, the commissioner of the Swiss Pavilion at the 16th Gwangju Biennale in the Republic of Korea, and the Aargauer Kuratorium.