Switzerland

“The gays did not stick with their habitual, defensive attitude, which was expected of them, even demanded. On the contrary! They climbed the barricades!”

This reaction followed Telearena, a 1978 Swiss television programme in which the “problem of homosexuality” was debated live on air. It marked one of the first occasions when individuals identifying as homosexual gained a public voice. It exposed them to reprisals, impacting everything from employment to mental health.

The Unfinished Business of Living Together offers coexistence as a social promise and a contested form. Beginning with Telearena and the equivalent 1984 francophone talk show Agora, the project revisits how Swiss television staged debates through live sketches provoking studio audiences.

Homosexuality serves as a historical entry point to the unresolved challenges of living together, exposing broader forces from state surveillance to moral panics around the family. Each member of the six-person artistic team asked themselves how memory is anchored in place, which historical materials might be reactivated as a living resource, and which need to be invented. At the project’s core, a spatialised video production mixes archival footage with new images; voices, spaces, and perspectives are found and shared.