Switzerland Today
Dear Swiss Abroad,
If you started the day with a bowl of muesli, raise a spoon to pioneering Swiss nutritionist Maximilian Bircher-Benner who was born in Aarau today in 1867 and who took away eggs and bacon from patients in his hospital and gave them piles of oats, nuts and fruit instead.
In the news: A problem lynx, a greater terrorist threat, more old people and centenarians, and a new financial index focusing on the climate.
The central Swiss canton of Schwyz has ordered the shooting of a lynx that has killed nine sheep in the Muota Valley within a few days without eating them. The lynx is equipped with a GPS transmitter that reports its location every six hours.
The terrorist threat in Switzerland has increased since the beginning of the year, warned the director of the Swiss Federal Intelligence Service. He points to a campaign launched by Islamic State calling for attacks in Europe.
The number of older people in Switzerland continues to rise. According to the Federal Statistical Office, 1.73 million people over the age of 65 were living in Switzerland at the end of 2023, compared to 1.69 million a year earlier. The number of centenarians also increased. Last year there were 2,086 people in this age group living in Switzerland, compared to 1,948 in 2022.
SIX, the financial group that runs the Swiss stock exchange, today announced the launch of a new index, the “SIX 1.5°C Climate Equity”. Its purpose, says a statement, is to help investors identify companies whose current and future business models are in line with the Paris Climate Agreement.
What can art in public spaces achieve? Since Monday morning a 15-metre model of a sperm whale has been raising eyebrows on the lakeshore in the city of Zurich, part of a three-day art project exploring ecological issues.
The responsible artists’ collective, Captain Boomer, was invited by Zurich’s Theater Spektakel in cooperation with the marine conservation organisation KYMA. The “obviously absurd and emotional image of a whale stranded on the shore of Lake Zurich near Utoquai” is intended to raise awareness of environmental destruction, species extinction and the endangerment of natural habitats, Zurich’s Theater Spektakel said.
A marine biologist from KYMA said the installation symbolised the need for Switzerland to do its part to protect the oceans. After all, despite sewage treatment plants, chemicals and microplastics used in Switzerland also end up in rivers and thus in the sea, she said.
The Tages-Anzeiger newspaper said reactions were mixed – both in its comments section and next to the whale – “from enthusiasm to incomprehension, from praise to displeasure”.
“The art event is moving,” it wrote in an editorialExternal link. “It triggers not only emotions, but also dialogue. About cruise ships, about whaling, perhaps simply about the theatre spectacle or why the sperm whale has such small teeth. This is particularly valuable when art in public spaces is accessible to everyone – and not reserved for an interested public in a white cube.”
The sperm whale project, it concluded, “shows the impact art can have in public spaces when it is suddenly simply there”.
This year’s Locarno Film Festival was also an opportunity to rediscover some gems of Swiss cinema that had fallen into oblivion. Film critic Pierre Jendrysiak reflects on two of them.
Repérages (Faces of Love) (1977) was directed by Michel Soutter, one of the members of Groupe 5, which brought together some of the greatest Swiss filmmakers of the 1960s. L’Allégement (The Unburdening) (1983) was the first feature film by Marcel Schüpbach, who made only three feature-length films between 1983 and 1995.
This double bill, entitled “Swiss Cinema Rediscovered”, was a chance to discover or rediscover two films that, in Jendrysiak’s view, carry a strange, dated charm.
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