The book Schi haiend gsait (literally meaning “one said”) is the visual extension of my bachelor thesis addressing the emigration and merging of municipalities of Swiss mountain villages, written at the HSLU Luzern Design+Kunst.
The focus of this work are the 120 residents populating a village where school and stores are a thing from the past and the political initiative Zweitwohnungsinitative (to stop the construction of second homes that only serve as holiday homes and are vacant for most of the year) threatens the work of local carpenters: Molinis. It lies deep in the heart of Graubünden’s steep valleys, on the route of the Rhaetian Railway between Chur and Arosa and is home of my fathers side of the family.

The text part stems from Interviews with villagers and self-authored paragraphs and complements the visual emptiness of the photographic part in which, encounters with locals are as non existent as in reality when strolling through the village. It portrays six residents and their different perspectives on life in the village and in general, raises questions about the future of the community and reveals the subtle neighbourly entanglements that exist in such small places that are so characteristic of life in a village.

I concluded my work with a multidisciplinary exhibition in which the audio recordings of the interviews, together with the book and enlarged photographs, provided a comprehensive insight into the small cosmos on the edge of Switzerland.