We are based in Switzerland but work in different regions across the world. That is not a neutral fact. It does not mean we are outside the world being discussed in this conference. Conflict is not something that happens elsewhere, contained within borders we do not share. The connections are structural: the arms trade, the flow of capital, the politics of asylum, the extraction of resources, the alliances that sustain or prolong wars. What looks like stability in some places is partly constituted by what is happening in others, and the distance between a conference room in Zurich and a context of active armed conflict is real but not innocent. It is a distance that requires explanation, not comfort.
At the same time, stability is increasingly a provisional condition. The political ground in many European countries is shifting in ways that make the framing of “conflict regions” and “peaceful regions” feel less and less adequate. The questions this assembly addresses, about rights, about peace, about who gets to speak and who is kept silent, are not only questions about somewhere else.
The organisers come from distinct practices and areas of focus and evidently have different missions, but they converge at the point where aesthetics, politics, and displacement intersect. The questions that shaped this assembly are ones all three organisations work with: what art can actually do, not as metaphor, but as practice, to contribute to a world less shaped by violence and injustice. These questions matter equally in art creation, art education, international cooperation, development, and peacebuilding. They are asked in places of exile, in war zones, in border regions, and in institutions far from the front lines. And they all bear equal weight: who defines artistic value, whose experience is considered relevant knowledge, and whether “support”, however well-intentioned, opens or narrows the terms of someone else’s practice.
Together, we are not a neutral convening body. We are three organisations with our own particular histories, structures, and interests, who have chosen to act on the shared conviction that bringing together practitioners working across these fault lines is necessary because the questions are too pressing, and too complex, to be faced alone.
What does it mean to organise an international assembly about art and conflict at a moment when more of the world is at war than at any point in recent decades, and when the ability to travel to Zurich is itself shaped by the very inequalities the conference addresses? Who is in the room, and who is not? And what does that absence – whether understood as silence or failure – cost the conversation? How do we create conditions where knowledge that comes from lived proximity to violence is in the lead, rather than being used to illustrate pre-existing arguments? How can we use and build on existing networks of solidarity to foster hope? How can countries like Switzerland contribute with awareness to these questions and what responsibilities are they willing to take? And when the three days are over, what do we owe to those who came?
These are not rhetorical questions, and we share them with many other individuals and structures willing to carry the responsibility. They shape how this assembly is built, and we expect them to be challenged, complicated, and answered differently by different people in the room. That friction is not a problem to be managed. It is an essential part of what we are here for.
