In 1953, Switzerland was appointed to the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission (NNSC) to observe the implementation of the Korean Armistice Agreement along the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) and at ten ports of entry in North and South Korea - alongside Czechoslovakia, Poland and Sweden. Using portable cameras, Swiss soldiers documented their daily lives at the “Swiss Camp” in the DMZ and on their missions in North and South Korea.

Working through this extensive archival corpus spanning from 1953 to the 1970s, the volume, State Fictions. Beyond Blossoms and Borders, edited by the artist and scholar Denise Bertschi on the occasion of the Swiss Pavilion, investigates the photographic gaze: Who holds the camera? What remains (in) visible in the images? How to read Switzerland’s efforts to forge a narrative combining the national myth of neutrality with a desire for geopolitical relevance? By contextualizing photographs and films taken by Swiss military men in Korea, this book unveils what lies beneath the surface of the visible in a plurivocal way: power dynamics, official fictions and resistant narratives that haunt the archive as a contested site of memory.

Published for the Swiss Pavilion at the 16th Gwangju Biennale, commissioned by the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia.

With contributions by Susann Ahn, Denise Bertschi, Martin Dusinberre, Avery F. Gordon, Da Hyung Jeong, Eleana J. Kim, Ingo Niermann, Yehre Suh, Alex Taek-Gwang Lee, Christin Yu.