Wednesday 27 March, Lausanne

I’m sitting in the Centre International de Recherches sur l’Anarchisme, CIRA, between the many books. Where to start? Upstairs there are the documents, newspapers, flyers, manifesto’s, zines, posters and booklets. Downstairs the books, of which three meters are in English. The archiving system is simple. For example, the first book I took out—Anarchism and environmental survival, by Graham Purchase—is coded BA388. B is for the height of the book—so no shelf space is wasted—A is for the language Anglais, 388 is about the order of acquisition. So on the top shelf at the far left is the first book of the collection, then it goes on chronological for each language, for each size. The first books in the English department that catch my eye are the ones I heard of, writers I heard of in relation to anarchism, or contrary, of whom I didn’t know they are related to anarchism, and books with subjects in the title that trigger my imagination in combination with anarchism.
Colin Ward—Talking Houses, The child in the city, Voices of Creative dissent, New town, Home town; a biography about Richard Reid; many titles by Naom Chomsky—Radical Priorities, Language and Politics, The culture of Terrorism; William Godwin (Mary Kelly ‘Frankenstein’s father), Bertrand Russel, Eric From, John Berger. I'm a member now, so I chose some to bring to the Embassy. Demanding the Impossible, a history of Anarchism, by Peter Marshall, and some books related to art and anarchism.
After an hour or two I go upstairs where someone is busy digitalising the posters, using big photo lamps that make the room look like a film set. I start looking at newspapers from the start of the 20th century. I find something wonderfull; on the cover of one paper there’s a typography experiment that is based on an image of a pamphlet that was reproduced on the last page of the issue before. A text in red with big arrows, overprinted over the ordinary text page. The way the layers mix looks kind of random, brutal. It wasn’t so easy in those days to print big diagonals I think. They must have had fun doing this. Were there many type setters in anarchism, or did the editors and writers learn to type set and print?

Tuesday 26 March, Geneva, UN

We went to the United Nations (UN) building for the 4pm tourist tour, were present  at the gate mentioned on the website at 3.50pm (see photo), and found a note saying we should go to another gate, where we arrived at 4pm sharp. Too late. Well, ok, next time. 

Monday 25 March, Geneva

Started to transcribe last week’s recorded talks. It is a lot of work, but I like it, listening back a conversation and hearing so much more than the first time. The moment you walk out the door, you’ve rephrased things, adjusted what you heard to your own way of thinking, filtered and edited without intending to. Transcribing a tape, word by word, makes you realise that often what you remember consists for a great part of things that you already knew, or at least the things you can easily place within what you already know or believe. It is just difficult to hear something that forces you to rethink part of the ground you stand on.
On the other hand; sometimes I remember something exactly because it is such a mystery to me, because it irritates and contradicts what I think I know. Sometimes such an itch starts attracting other remarks or observations that don’t seem to fit, somehow. After a while there’s a pile of these misfits, growing, tilting and then sliding, till you have to start investigating a whole wide net of believes and prejudices that seemed the simplest truths just before. Where did they come from, what are they connected to, how would one see the world without them? 

Sunday 24 March, Geneva

Maison Baron had it’s first Barbaron today, with drinks and snacks and a talk by Merel, Rob and me. We were going to talk about academic and non-academic research, based on the many talks we had here in Maison Baron over the last weeks, but once we got going things took their own cours, as usual. Difficult. We started off with the exposé of the wonderfull documentary “De werkelijkheid van Karel Appel” (www.youtube.com/watch?v=-24YvCbSoAE), ‘staging the artist’ as a Malschwein, a barbarian in barbarian times, as Karel Appel himself states, while turning to the camera with a tube of paint in one hand and a knife in the other. A classic. Then some video fragments from Italian conversations—Art in the Age of Berlusconi. About 35 people attended on this cold wet sunday, and allthough we didn’t talk much about the new research on anarchism, that was was people mostly chose to react on afterwards, bringing more interesting new links and stories. 

Saturday 23 March, Geneva

(Rember to check out William Goldwin)

Friday 22 March, Geneva

Reminded once again: the ordinary daily & social & financial reality in which we work has a big effect on what is been made, and how (and if) it can be shared. We visited Richard Le Quellec in his studio, which he shares with Severin. It is one of many large studio’s in a subterranean passage under a modernist building with apartements and small shops. They share the passage with some car repair workshops. It smells nice.
Richard and Severin tell us briefly about the 150 squats Geneva had, the social life and the action around it, and how most of them were evicted in a very short time, leaving the city empty and the art scene scattered. There’s not so much a lack of studio’s, but of the mix of activities that created the dynamics in the big squats like Artamis. They made a nice video featuring a map of the city with little models of the buildings on it, a colour code for the different functions. We hear the same story over and over, but with different details and different emphasis. Geneva was an exciting city for contemporary art, but since all the squats were closed it is kind of finished. 
Next time more about how the Rassemblement des Artistes et Acteurs Culturels managed to change the status of art in the law of the state of Geneva.

Les Anarchistes, scenes et portraits presentés et commentés par Alain Sergent. A book from Richard's parents' bookshelves. Caption of this image—showing a wide range of anarchist newspapers of the time: La Presse Libertaire. Other images in the book depict grim looking anarchists plotting revolution in messy rooms.

Thursday 21 March, Geneva

Spring started today. The gardener came and found all seeds in the shed eaten by mice. He's a nice guy from Texas, who came along one day and asked Madeleine and Richard if he could do the garden and grow some vegetables (I understood, but got to ask again). He told in the US the number of farmers is increasing for the first time since long, and most of them are kind of amateurs; well educated city-mice who often try to bring back some life into deserted village centres.

My head was too full. Too much input. Lets' recap; how do we find back the feeling of 'studio-time', studio-hours. A Way Out. Countryside Issues. Standing on the river bank, look at the water. Refuge. Out of what? Out of the mind-loops and preconceived images that structure our thoughts. Why? Anarchism, decentralisation. Hundred years of centralisation. We looked at self-organisation in art for years, and only realised recently, that that is anarchist practice.
Richard pointed at an advertisement at the side of the road: "Tired? Do a Turbo-siesta". I don't want to have a turbo-siesta. Some things don't improve by making them more effective.

In the annex of Maison Baron all rooms are occupied this week: two African musicians/actors who play in a piece called 'Chaque homme est une race', the light and sound technician of the dance performance 'Encore', and a couple in a silver hummer with a Harley Davidson sticker on the back. 
Meeting with Merel over dinner, preparing for our Barbaron-presentation, which will be something like a mutual interview between us three about simularities and difference in our approaches?

Finished Dept, the first 500 years, by David Graeber.  It was a real, great adventure reading this book. The end wasn't really a surprise obviously, but still faster then anticipated, because of the 140 pages of notes at the end. It's a history of Dept from an anthropologists' perspective, which means, in Graebers own words: 'When one carries out an ethnography, one observes what people do, and then tries to tease out the hidden symbolic, moral, or pragmatic logics that underlie their actions; one tries to get at the way people's habits and actions makes sense in ways that they are not themselves completely aware of. One obvious role for a radical intellectual is to do precisely that: to look at those who are creating viable alternatives, try to figure out what might be the larger implications of what they are (already) doing, and then offer those ideas back, not as prescriptions, but as contributions, possibilities –– as gifts'. (from: Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology) 

Wednesday 20 March, Zurich –> Geneva

Visited Georg at edition fink, as always a pleasure. Talking about books, about the changing logic of publishing and distribution. I think he is always looking for new interesting problems and possibilities within the ever changing rules of the game, mixing and combining the use of internet and printed matter, for instance. (The archive, website and publication fink is making with artist H.R. Fricker is inspiring: www.erobertdiewohnzimmer.net)
I also see a paralel with Wenzel and Soren; all interested in the underlying rules under the surface, acknowledging them, investigating them and making them visible through some kind of meaningfull play.
Drove back to Geneve, went straight to Mamco, where Charles Esche lectured a full two hours for a full house.

Tuesday March, 19, Zürich

Breakfast with our friend Sören, at his house, nearby where we stay. He is  immobilised by a knee injury. Like Rob he started to bake sourdough bread, but more ambitious as a baker, he is now supplying a restaurant once a week. Sören is a good one for curiously approaching personal misfortune as potentially interesting material for new work. Now he’s turning a courtcase against the Zurich police into a performance series.
Visited the Löwenbrau, which we didn’t see since it re-opened. They have an oxygen problem inside; the spaces are too hermetic. And what happened to the once so exciting bookshop Kunstgriff? In the evening a video lecture in Shedhalle. Kontinuitäten rechter Ästhetik: Syberbergs Wagner/Hitler-Komplex. Eight visitors in the house. Was the opera audience not invited?

Saturday March 16, Geneva

In Geneva there are many kiosks, and they all sell—next to the national Swiss newspapers in three languages and the local newspapers  of different cities (Tribune de Genève, NZZ-Neu Züricher Zeitung, Basler Zeitung etc)— French newspapers, German, some Italian, a Spanish, the International Herald Tribune, Financial Times Weekly and so on. Even the French satirical paper Le Canard Enchainé is for sale at a kiosk in ‘our’ neighbourhood, which is a normal 'kitz' with some residential buildings, some banks, art galleries, and some small industry and shops, neither really central, nor very rich.

The kiosk close to our house in Rotterdam used to have the Gazetta dello Sport, Times, Guardian, Turkish, Belgian and a Chinese newspaper. I realise over the last 2 years many Tabac shops closed down there, their services taken over by supermarkets, and they only sell Dutch newspapers, which more and more look alike in respect of their content and position—and by the way, are mostly owned by one owner and residing in one city, now that NRC Handelsblad moved it’s editorial offices from the periphery of Rotterdam to the centre of Amsterdam. A choice of international newspapers one can only find at one bookshop and at the central station now, I think. 

With the internet we're not exactly deprived of choice and news obviously, and we can watch Al Jazeera English now, which is great, but the kiosks' display of the ‘real newspapers’ with today’s news, all of them together, not only your favourite one, the visual and physical directness of all these parallel front pages, headlines, languages, juxtaposed, that's another experience. Analogue newspapers mirror that experience within them as well, because, as a practical implication of a broadsheet layout, many stories come together on a page. I love what that triggers in your brain, there's always some kind of context, random or not, noticed consciously or not—always something to think about.

Now that I start comparing; also the radio broadcasts here are much more divers. There is experimental music on the radio here! And World music! And classical music with a range that I didn't hear for years in the Netherlands. Our introduction of this blog, the escape, the asylum, it is irony—sure—we're luxury escapists, but I realise now that I feel truly liberated from the Dutch media terror.  It's great to be away from it for a while. It’s not necessarily better here, but it is more divers and more internationally oriented.

Don't ask a fish to describe the water he is swimming in. I remember what the artist Alberto Garutti said in the conversation we had with him in Milan in his studio for our research on Italian contemporary art: "I think artists should have an oblique gaze, betraying the centrality of the system". It's a mysterious sentence to me, something may have been lost in transcription/translation, and I don't think I really understand, but somehow this sentence seems right to me, and it keeps popping up in my mind, opening some doors rather than closing one. 

On my way home, with the International Herald tribune under my arm (4 CHF) I see a group of about twenty people waiting in front of a church. I ask one of them what's happening. "Manger gratuit Madame; free food. There are no jobs for us." Back home reading the paper, I realise all advertisements are for extremely expensive jewels, handbags, travels and specially lots of watches. 

ps (23 March) a new paper is starting up in the Netherlands, called The Correspondent. No ads, only online.

Wednesday March 13, Geneva

Why can't they find a Pope that hasn’t been somehow involved in a facsist dictature?

Tuesday March 12, Fribourg

Today we talked with Florian Eitel at the University of Fribourg. He studies the history of late 19th century Anarchism in Switzerland, and Federalism as a transnational history. The street where the university resides has the same name as the Hotel where Empress Sissi died after an attack by Italian anarchist Luigi Lucheni, one of the events that gave anarchism such a bad name.
Florian tells about 'his time', 1860—1880), which he sees as the beginning of globalisation. The anarchists used all the new technical possibities of their time—trains, mail, rotation press, steno—to connect all over europe, and to distribute their ideas. A real progressive, inventive network culture. Many stories, a two-and a half hour recording we’ll transcribe, and a reading list. More later. We agree to meet again in Geneva in April, where Florian is doing research in the University library. 

Today we attended the disertation defence of our flat mate in the University of Geneva. Very exciting few hours theatre; specialist's questions, additions and remarks, displays of erudition, leading to a glorious 'Mention: très honorable avec félicitations du jury'.
I know most anarchists would probably be against this institute, the university, with it's hierarchies, specialisations and devisions, but this afternoon seemed to me like an interesting, highly formalised game to organise feedback by peers. It would be nice in the arts to have rituals for such a collaborative effort of concentrating on a specific topic, trying to find out what we can know for sure, what we can speculate on, what we can agree on to be common knowledge, and what can be interesting future subjects of study.
So a student finishes a big research, and then is free to propose a comittee of different specialists, from either the same or neighbouring disciplines, and from anywhere in the world. These people, if they are interested and accept the invitation, will thoroughly read the findings and the proposal, and on the day of the defence they will each have about half an hour in which they formulate their reaction to the thesis in general, how they think the thesis adds to the field in general, to their specialisation in particular, ask question and suggest improvements.
They are offcourse on stage, speaking in front of an interested lay audience as well as for highly estimated colleagues, another game format that adds extra challenge I'm sure. So the centre of all this attention, the writer of the thesis, and the casting director at the same time, is sitting in the front row of the lecture hall, all alone, litterally between the seats for the students and the place designated to the lecturer. But she's not all alone; the audience is all behind her, in support, so to say, when she replies to the experts. The experts not only face the student, they face all of us, and we all look at the slightest signs on their faces when they talk, as well as when they just listen. The candidate meanwhile is protected from our gaze.
^

Friday March 8, Genève

An e-mail saying the book I ordered at the English bookshop still didn't arrive and won't before next Thursday.
Wednesday March 6, 2013, Geneva
We talk on the phone with Gisele, one of the people behind l'Espace Noir, the anarchist cultural centre in St. Imier's we will visit tomorrow. St-Imier is a little town in the Jura that hosted the 2012 International Anarchist gathering last summer. It was the 140 year celebration of the 1872 Anarchist International of St Imier, just after the split between the Marxists and the Anarchists:
This followed the 'expulsions' of Mikhail Bakunin and James Guillaume from the First International at the Hague Congress (1872). It attracted the great majority of affiliates of the First International, repudiated the Hague resolutions, and adopted a Bakunist programme, and lasted until 1877 – a year longer than the smaller Marxist wing headquartered in New York.
The St. Imier International was created when the Swiss Jura Federation, the most important anarchist section of the old International, sent a proposal to the other sections, several of which then assembled at St. Imier to create a new anti-authoritarian organization. The organization was made up of various national federations of workers' societies, mainly the Italian, Spanish, Belgian, American, French and French-speaking Swiss federations, together with other individual organizations which all opposed Karl Marx's control of the General Council and favoured the autonomy of national sections from centralized control.
At the St. Imier Congress, held on 15–16 September 1872, the delegates proclaimed '[t]hat the aspirations of the proletariat can have no other aim than the creation of an absolutely free economic organisation and federation based upon work and equality and wholly independent of any political government, and that such an organisation or federation can only come into being through the spontaneous action of the proletariat itself, through its trade societies, and through self-governing communes.'" (Wikipedia)
^

Tuesday March 5, Genève

This weekend there was a referendum in Switserland: an initiative on executive pay, banning golden hellos for new employees and golden parachutes for departing staff. It also would introduce binding shareholder votes on salary levels. There was another one too, about spatial planning limiting the selling of land for development purposes. A Dutch friend spend a lot of time explaining the Dutch democratic system to Swiss friends, because the Swiss friends couldn't believe our voting rights are limited to the general elections once every four year. (they took place much more often lately, by the way)  They kept asking questions because how could the Netherlands be a democracy that way?
In today's newsletter of Dutch newspaper NRC I read that the owner of a big Dutch hospital, a real estate entrepreneur, died some time ago, and his heirs now want a 26 million loan back from the hospital, directly endangering the existence of the hospital. What? I had no idea. I would think a hospital is something that is just there, something public. Very naive perhaps, but I never heard before that a hospital went bankrupt. So if it goes bankrupt, will the state buy it, like they bought bankrupt banks? And what's 'they' exactly? Is it 'we', outsourced to some structure called 'state', 'government'? 
I realise I have no idea what a state actualy is. In Italy it's clearly something people experience as something powerfull, messy and malevolent, outside them. I have to admit I always had a vague notion of it being the organisation of the commons, the 'cause public', something just opposite 'the market'. 
There is no academic consensus on the most appropriate definition of the state. The term "state" refers to a set of different, but interrelated and often overlapping, theories about a certain range of political phenomena.The act of defining the term can be seen as part of an ideological conflict, because different definitions lead to different theories of state function, and as a result validate different political strategies.
The most commonly used definition is Max Weber's, which describes the state as a compulsory political organization with a centralized government that maintains a monopoly of the legitimate use of force within a certain territory.
General categories of state institutions include administrative bureaucracies, legal systems, and military or religious organizations.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a state is "a an organized political community under one government; a commonwealth; a nation. b such a community forming part of a federal republic, esp the United States of America".'
David Graeber, in Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology (p.65): 
'States have a peculiar dual character. They are at the same time forms of institutionalized raiding or extortion, and utopian projects. The first certainly reflects the way states are actually experienced, by any communities that retain some degree of autonomy; the second however is how they tend to appear in the written record.
In one sense states are the “imaginary totality” par excellence, and much of the confusion entailed in theories of the state historically lies in an inability or unwillingness to recognize this. For the most part, states were ideas, ways of imagining social order as something one could get a grip on, models of control. This is why the first known works of social theory, whether from Persia, or China, or ancient Greece, were always framed as theories of statecraft. This has had two disastrous effects. One is to give utopianism a bad name. (The word “utopia” first calls to mind the image of an ideal city, usually, with perfect geometry—the image seems to harken back originally to the royal military camp: a geometrical space which is entirely the emanation of a single, individual will, a fantasy of total control.) All this has had dire political consequences, to say the least. The second is that we tend to assume that states, and social order, even societies, largely correspond.' 
And on p. 66 he proposes: 'So that’s one project: to reanalyze the state as a relation between a utopian imaginary, and a messy reality involving strategies of flight and evasion, predatory elites, and a mechanics of regulation and control.
All this highlights the pressing need for another project: one which will ask, If many political entities we are used to seeing as states, at least in any Weberian sense, are not, then what are they? And what does that imply about political possibilities?'
^

Friday 1 March, Genève

And finally time to read. Off to the English bookshop 'Off the Shelve' to order a book I found on the internet: David Weir's Anarchy and Culture. Offcourse we could order it here at Amazon or something, but let's check out the local bookshop, instead of staying inside and spend time on creating yet another login account.
Here a discription of Anarchy and Culture from Google Books:
Anarchism is generally understood as a failed ideology, a political philosophy that once may have had many followers but today attracts only cranks and eccentrics. This book argues that the decline of political anarchism is only half the story; the other half is a tale of widespread cultural success.
David Weir develops this thesis in several ways. He begins by considering the place of culture in the political thought of the classical anarchist thinkers William Godwin, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Mikhail Bakunin, and Peter Kropotkin. He then shows how the perceived "anarchy" of nineteenth-century society induced writers such as Matthew Arnold, Henry James, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky to turn away from politics and seek unity in the idea of a common culture.
Yet as other late nineteenth-century writers and artists began to sympathize with anarchism, the prospect of a common culture became increasingly remote. In Weir's view, the affinity for anarchism that developed among members of the artistic avant-garde lies behind much of fin de siecle culture. Indeed, the emergence of modernism itself can be understood as the aesthetic realization of anarchist politics. In support of this contention, Weir shows that anarchism is the key aesthetic principle informing the work of a broad range of modernist figures, from Henrik Ibsen and James Joyce to dadaist Hugo Ball and surrealist Luis Buñuel.
Weir concludes by reevaluating the phenomenon of postmodernism as only the most recent case of the migration of politics into aesthetics, and by suggesting that anarchism is still very much with us as a cultural condition.

(Afterthought; it will cost me more than 10 CHF extra, this loyalty to the local shopkeeper. I don't know if I'll do that again)
^

Wednesday 27 february, Genève

We're tired and we watch two reportages online: Do-it-yourself' and 'Glocalisation', both from the series 'tegenlicht' reportages (www.tegenlicht.vpro.nl) about (as sociologist Manuel Castells calls it, we learn) a newly emerging culture of self-organisation. From energy, to health- and disability insurances for freelancers or social care. In about 50 minutes we see all kinds of succesfull local, social initiatives by people who don't trust the old political structures any longer and don't have the patience to wait till one of the few big competing companies who offer the service needed, improve their offer, and so they organise their own alternatives. Green networked energy coops for instance, like Samsø, the Danish island that is now self-sufficient, combining different kinds of green power, generating more electricity than they use themselves. 
By now liberal and neo-liberal governments have put so much emphasis on 'big society', own responsability and so on, just to cover up for the decline of the public institutes and the budget cuts on everything social, critical, and cultural, redistributing responsabilities but not the according budgets, it contaminated words like self-organisation, private initiative and responsability. 
It seems like time for a re-invention and reclaimation of public institutions, and perhaps that's what these kind of initiatives show; small scale re-formulations of what could and should be commons. The word is never mentioned in the reportage, but all these examples are anarchistic initiatives, direct action, practical self-organisation outside of the state and outside of market-logic. Perhaps better without the word. No problem.
^

Saturday 9 February, Genève

In a cafe we saw an older man, well dressed and wearing gold-rimmed pilot model glasses. In a blue notebook he wrote down the precise amount he had spend on his coffee. When I asked him about it he answered that he wanted to proof he didn't spend much. He worked for the city his whole life, till he had a burn-out. Now his tax bill — I'm cutting short because my french wasn't sufficient - is much too high, so he's making a case by proving his sober life-style to his former employer and the tax authorities. He started to explain that the city and the state are badly governed, the political parties are like sekts to him, and the Swiss work hard, but are way too obedient. We were surprised and brought in mind the international reputation of the Swiss direct democraty, the quality of the public services and public space. But he had no doubts. When I asked: 'mais alors monsieur, sa veut-dire maintenant, vous êtes anarchist?', he laughed and bend forward a bit. He lowered his voice and started to explain us about anarchism, said he studied the principles a bit. He admitted, he said, to have a great sympathy for an anarchism 'de droit', a right-wing anarchism. He fears left-wing anarchists want to destroy everything. Personally he likes order, he explained, so he'ld like the police, the army and the church, the traditions and the law to stay; not in defence of political ideals, but in defence of 'le peuple', freedom of thought, and 'l'humanism'.

Hm... Scary idea; anarchism with police and army. Who will they obey? Would there be existing situations that are more or less like that? Pessoa's Anarchist Banker? And why do the left-wing anarchists have such a bad reputation? They have a much friendlier worldview I guess.
Still: we had our first unexpected meeting with an unexpected, self-declared Swiss anarchist – former public servant. 
^

Friday 8 February, Genève

Today the Anararchietage in Winterthur started. Would be good to go there on Sunday 10, when there is a lecture of Adi Feller, who will speak about the banishment of anarchists from Switzerland in the late 19th century. How to combine this with the work that needs to be done, and with the Fasnachtmontag trip we planned to Lötschental and Mardi Gras (Shrove Tuesday) in Evolène? Vernacular performance. I've been looking forward to that, and we're so close now. Winterthur is in the far North-East corner of the country, and Evolèle just South-East of Geneva. 
^

Thursday 7 February, Genève

Serious delay: I am doing the design and layout for a book, and now suddenly, between page 68 and 69 there is a 'black hole'. All text- and image boxes dissappear in it, and while I was trying to fix it, without further notice the software generated 300 new pages, in which the lost content poppes up at seemingly random places. One day lost solving it.
Also some very good news: we can make an appointment to talk with Florian Eitel, a Swiss student of the University of Fribourg who is writing his thesis on anarchism. He is considered the specialist of the university in the matter. 
^

Wednesday 6 February, Genève

Cleaning discussion in the house. Shall we make a scedule? Shall we hire someone?
^

Tuesday 5 February, Genève

So now we live in Villa Baron, Embassy of Foreign Artists, together with Emile and Merel. In the day also Madeleine, Angela and Richard are here to work, and every day different people came along for this or that. We all share the kitchen, the bathroom, the wintergarten — everything except our small private rooms with bed and desk. I allready learned  where to buy food and in which categories to divide the garbage, I know the shower takes 5 minutes to get warm in the morning, we have our own shelve in the fridge and the kitchen cupboard, and I start to get an idea how the wintergarden, the most beautifull place in the house, is politely timeshared. I know that if you want to go to the toilet at night you need to be dressed, because the balcony you cross on the way has very bright lights that are activated by a movement sensor. I would like to see that from the point of view of a passer-by.

The villa is a countryhouse, mid 19th century, and the city has been growing  all the way up to the walls of the garden. It's an enclave, the garden is surrounded by small industry ('50s till '70s I think) mega-shops (new) and private banks (inbetween). We're here to find out about anarchism, about the early Russian anarchists who were in exile in this part of Switzerland––a quiet place to prepare the revolution. 
Can art be that kind of place were one gets space and time to figure out new concepts? I see enclaves everywhere now. Switzerland the tax haven in Europe (as the Netherlands are too), this house a little island in the bussiness area, the field of art as an enclave in the logic of the time. Hopefully. It's difficult to see the water you swim in so you need to be able to get out and look at it.  ^