THE UNFINISHED BUSINESS OF LIVING TOGETHER AT THE SWISS PAVILION
An exhibition that revisits television archives to reflect on coexistence as both a social promise and a contested field.
The Swiss Pavilion at the 61st International Venice Biennale presents The Unfinished Business of Living Together, an exhibition conceived by Gianmaria Andreetta and Luca Beeler together with artist Nina Wakeford, and developed in collaboration with Miriam Laura Leonardi, Lithic Alliance, and Yul Tomatala.
The project approaches coexistence as both a social promise and a contested condition, mobilizing art to reopen the archive as a space of conflict and active participation. It begins with an April 1978 episode of Telearena, in which the so-called “problem of homosexuality” was debated live on public television. This broadcast marked one of the first instances in which homosexual individuals gained a public voice in mass media, catalyzing alliances between lesbian and gay communities across Switzerland.
The topic was revisited in Agora (1984), which brought together Swiss, French, and Canadian audiences through satellite transmission. Both programs used live sketches to stimulate discussion and encourage audiences to respond from their own experience.
For the artistic team, the challenges of living together remain unresolved, as attempts at social change continue to confront established norms and systems of exclusion and silence. In this framework, homosexuality serves as a historically specific entry point to examine how social norms determine who can speak and be heard, revealing broader patterns such as state surveillance and moral panics surrounding the nuclear family.
The exhibition stages both the possibilities and tensions of “living together.” At its center, a spatialized video production combines archival material with new images and sound, extending into the pavilion’s garden to explore intimacy in public space and the ways memory is anchored in place. Through montage and installation, the project reactivates the archive as a living resource and raises questions about media infrastructures.
The exhibition results from a collaborative artistic and curatorial process, bringing together multiple perspectives to explore how voices, spaces, and viewpoints can be shared and continuously reconfigured.
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