Our Offices & Partners Abroad

For detailed information please click on the offices and cultural centres below. For further information on the headquarters in Zurich please go to: www.prohelvetia.ch

Projects supported >

«Wallmapu ex-situ»

Switzerland, Chile — Knowledge sharing Comunidad de conservación Namuncai © Aldir Polymeris

Wallmapu is the Mapuche name for the territory inhabited by this community. However, this territory is officially called Araucanía and is largely within the territory of the Chilean state. For 400 years, Wallmapu has been the scene of a highly complex territorial conflict between Mapuche communities, the Chilean state, transnational forestry companies and descendants of European settlers, among them, members of a Swiss diaspora.

«Wallmapu ex-situ» is a virtual space in the form of a videoconference room, a real, yet geographically unreachable meeting place. Based on indigenous ontologies and Bruno Latour’s «Parliament of Things», human representatives of non-human actors from Switzerland and Chile will meet here to reflect on the implications of the colonial history of Wallmapu and to collectively develop new narrative forms for this history.

#2 Conference © Domink Zietlow
#2 Conference © Domink Zietlow

Through three conferences, held in both German and Spanish, «Wallmapu ex-situ» uses the virtual space in relation to its characteristic as a space of possibilities, in which traditional borders and hierarchies are speculatively crossed, allowing the dissemination of new discourses on other forms of coexistence that do not have any space in real politics. 

About Trop cher to share 

Trop cher to share is a trans-disciplinary artist collective whose core currently consists of Nina Willimann and Aldir Polymeris. Since 2011, Trop cher to share develops mostly site-specific projects, often collaborating with local communities and artists. Since 2014, the group has been engaged with the Region of Wallmapu and the entanglement of Switzerland in its history. The first project, Arcadia (2014), won the jury prize of the Secondo Theater Festival in 2015. In 2020, the project «Teach me to dance!» (2019) ranked on the shortlist of the 7th Swiss Theatertreffen. 

Other Projects

Upcoming maintenance work

The application portal myprohelvetia will be updated from 1.1.-7.1.2024. Due to these changes, open applications must be finalized and submitted via the current online portal (myprohelvetia.ch) by the latest 23:59 on 31 December 2023. Until this date, the deadlines and criteria outlined in the current guidelines and calls for applications apply. New applications can be created and submitted in the application portal as of 8 January 2024.