Sell Us Your Liberty, or We’ll Subcontract Your Death (2023)

Sell Us…(2023) surveys architectural signage of companies in Switzerland that produce war materiel (war equipment and physical supplies), dual-use technology, and intellectual property for domestic military use and export under the policy of armed neutrality. These include Swiss companies and subsidiaries of international defense companies. In 2020, Switzerland exported war matériel to 60 countries.

As in the US, the white-collar and production backend of Swiss war production operates–to a degree–in plain sight, advertising wares, capacities, and business locations on rich websites and via “monument” signs fronting HQs and satellite production sites. While dwarfed by the US's defense industry, which sells 40% of war materials globally, in 2022 Switzerland exported $1 billion USD in war materiel and weapons. 

In 2023, the Swiss weapons industry operates in the geopolitical context of Russia's war in Ukraine, Switzerland signaling the intention to join the European Sky Shield Initiative joint air defense system, and increasing arms exports to Qatar and the Middle East, all set against the question of the future of permanent armed neutrality.

In collaboration with Amy Balkin, the rubbings that make up Sell us…(2023) were acquired from publicly accessible signs across Switzerland by Fondation Tschuess and Courtney Jaeger.