What forms of narrative and documentation can do justice to a project characterized by constant change? It is impossible to survey the whole, draw a representative map or establish a universal chronology. Instead, individual stories, personal statements and subjective images are like multiple facets contributing their part to the bigger picture. Their function is exemplary rather than special – appearing as if selected by chance, dredged to the surface or washed upon the shore. What about the bigger picture they evoke, the Heitere Fahne– is it a place, a location, a building, or a shared idea?

The images were taken over a period of three years, on the margins of the main action. The participants’ thoughts, recorded as short written notes, reveal vision and delusion, utopia and reality, pleasure and despair of this intensive experiment to turn a collective dream into reality. The guest house in Wabern near Bern – origin of local craft beer and later a pub attached to the former “Gurten-Brewery” – became a potent symbol of an experiment dedicated to a collective site for culture. The images and texts act like snapshots: atmospheric impressions with distinct shutter speeds, depths of focus and angles. They are traces; personal and subjective references to a whole, not requiring any interpretation. As fragments, they suggest the diversity and complexity of such a participatory undertaking.

Personal Work
2014 – 2017

Atelier Kornhaus, Agency
Melanie Brandel and Stephan Nopper, Art Direction
Melanie Brandel, Design
Ruben Wyttenbach, Project Manager
Ruben Wyttenbach, Photo Editing
Sturm & Drang Verlag, Reto Caduff, Publisher