Embarking on the Quest of Social Visibility

Inspired by a Swiss legend, Emilio Nasser deconstructs migration representation through the story of a wish-making boat.

"People would spend days and nights at the lake margins, longing to see the magical ship and have their desires met”. My Swiss fairy tales; Morello, 2016.

This documentary project departs from the human longing for a better place by retelling an unknown ancient Swiss legend. On Lac Leman in Geneva, there sails a boat that, if you are lucky enough to see it, will grant you a wish. This imaginary desire serves as a starting point to talk about the longing for what we consider home. The story follows the traces of a self-organized school that roams around Zurich in search of a permanent free space and listens to the wisdom shared by the school’s interconnected multiple voices.

The Autonome Schule is a grassroots movement composed of locals and migrants in Zurich. It emerged in 2008 during the struggle against the new Swiss asylum law. Since then, the school has been an emancipatory educational project, offering access to free German language classes for illegalized people, asylum seekers, and refugees. In this way becoming an active space of political discussion where unrepresented people can play an active role in voicing their demands. The school is marked by the constant search for space in which squatting, relocations, and solidarity have built its identity.  

I arrived at the school to study German, and actively participated in other internal working groups. That is when I began collaborating with migrants, activists, and others who passed through the school by making collaborative portraits and inviting them to share their thoughts about a personal notion of home by writing them down on a hat. Le Bateau Fantôme seeks to interconnect the Swiss myth of a wish-granting boat, the invisible traces of a free space for illegalized people, and their voices that meet at the crossroads of Swiss-European migration policies. 

A video version of the series is available here.

Words and Pictures by Emilio Nasser

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Emilio Nasser's visual practice is focused on expanding through diverse lens-based practices and collaborative strategies; the infinite possibilities of visual narratives. Embarking on different paths, his works are based on and with local histories, re-visited myths, oral memories, identities, belonging, imagination, community, and some other things that are still complicated to explain with words on a conscious level. Follow him on Instagram and PhMuseum

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This feature is part of Story of the Week, a selection of relevant projects from our community handpicked by the PhMuseum curators.

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