Is This Really Switzerland? (Not What You’d Expect)

Being back in Switzerland after some travel in Mexico I continue with my videos, developing further my concept and vision around encounters with locals while traveling. Equipped with a new system to capture myself and other people, I walk around the streets of Geneva, Switzerland, meeting interesting people and showing a side from Switzerland you probably wouldn’t expect: multiculturality, subcultural alternative neighborhoods, and slightly shady and/or underground urban spots. In this video, I ended up encountering people having fun, people working at the market, Somalian store owners, street guys, youngs chilling around and last but not least, bicycle messengers or cycle couriers, a whole subcultural movement and profession. This is maybe not the most dangerous hood of Switzerland but isn’t far from being (the country is very safe overall).

Note: if the topic is this video may be provocative, I fully respect all the people I meet. The very first person I met was drunk and he started to speak to me. As it was at this moment very hard to motivate myself to speak to people because just starting this new process I kept the sequence. In no way to expose people that may be drunk, but to keep this authenticity of my very first encounter. People are also aware of my camera (quite visible on a pole attached to my shoulder). If the people are not aware at first, I explain them that it is filming and my process to preserve authenticity which most of the time they understand and are open with. If they aren’t I avoid using the sequences. I concede there were some exceptions in this video because I just wanted to show as well the difficulty of this process to preserve authenticity and I will do better in future videos, being as respectful as possible but also showing the reality of places, something usually not captured when everything is pre-organized and structured, which end up being compensated with beautiful images that don’t represent the reality.

#Switzerland #Geneva #Alternative