In the spring and summer of 2025, writer Suo’er from Guangzhou, Beijing-based independent curator Li Jia, and artist Chen Yifei, whose practice moves between Berlin and China’s Pearl River Delta, came together in Switzerland through residencies organised by Pro Helvetia. Although their projects differed, the three participants shared a common experience: the residency programme provided the time, freedom and network needed to develop new research, establish meaningful connections and generate collaborations that continue to shape their work beyond Switzerland.

Installation view of ‘Constellations of Hope, Sharing Grounds’, curated by Jia Li at Ausstellungsraum Klingental, Basel. The exhibition explored practices of care through the everyday collective gestures of the Asian diaspora and transnational solidarity, photo by Li JiaWorkshop Have You Eaten Yet? , a Participatory Brunch, initiated and organised by Asian Futures Collective as part of the exhibition ‘Constellations of Hope, Sharing Grounds’, photo by Li Jia

The residencies offered a point of departure into Switzerland’s diverse social and cultural landscapes. Based at a writer’s residency near Lausanne, Suo’er explored the experiences of Asian diasporic communities and other marginalised groups in Switzerland. Upon returning to China, he published a widely acclaimed novel drawing on the history of the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia.

Li Jia travelled extensively among artist-run spaces and cultural communities in Basel, Bern, Zurich and beyond, and developed the exhibition ‘Constellations of Hope, Sharing Grounds’ at Ausstellungsraum Klingental in Basel. The project explored collective practices, cultural spaces, and networks of mutual support within Asian diasporic communities.

Chen Yifei connected with self-organised communities of artists and activists, alternative cultural networks, and local art institutions across Switzerland and Europe. Through workshops, storytelling, zine-making, and exchanges, he built lasting relationships and collaborations across different contexts.

Written by Li Jia as a conversation among the three participants, this text reflects on the encounters, research, and exchanges that emerged during their residencies, and on how these experiences continue to shape their work.

Rethinking diaspora: from geographical movement to lived experience

Li Jia:  Before arriving in Switzerland, what questions or interests were already driving your artistic practice? How did the residency provide new contexts, encounters, or experiences that deepened or challenged your understanding of diaspora and what it encompasses—mobility, in-betweenness, and marginality?

Suo’er: My residency research primarily focuses on diasporic cultures, with particular attention to Chinese diasporic communities in Switzerland as well as marginalized groups in a broader sense. One question interested me most: how do diasporic communities negotiate everyday life and cultivate belonging within Switzerland’s specific social context? This absence made me particularly curious about those more dispersed Chinese migrants: How do they find their place within local society? And how do they build connections with others and the broader society in the absence of large ethnic support networks? These questions ultimately became the core of my residency research.

Residency host, Château de Lavigny, photo by Suo’er

Chen Yifei: It was only after I left Guangzhou for Germany two or three years ago that I began to understand the questions of diaspora more deeply through my own embodied experience. The most immediate realization came through the bureaucratic procedures embedded in everyday life. Whether applying for a visa, obtaining a SIM card, opening a bank account, or completing different forms of registration, I had to learn and adapt to everything all over again. Through this process, I came to realize that many things I had taken for granted as a citizen in China were in fact grounded in a form of invisible privilege. Living in Europe as a foreigner, I began to understand which forms of access and convenience had been naturalized for local citizens, while outsiders, diasporic subjects, and marginalized communities had to make additional efforts to obtain them.

I also gradually came to recognize that mobility itself, for all its difficulties and uncertainties, can be a form of privilege. This led me to further reflect on the relationship between mobility and rootedness. But if we wish to genuinely engage with the social fabric of a place and bring about deeper forms of change, long-term commitment and presence are necessary. The question of how to hold mobility and rootedness together, how to remain attentive to diasporic experience while also finding ground where collective practices can take root and grow, has stayed with me ever since.

Espace Noir, a forty-year-old self-managed anarchist cultural centre in Saint-Imier, a small town in the Bernese Jura. Founded in 1984 and opened in 1986, it grew out of a collective effort by local anarchists, including architect Maurice Born, to save and renovate a former abandoned watchmaking building. Today, the cooperative remains collectively governed and self-managed, photo by Chen YifeiThe 35-seat cinema at Espace Noir was the smallest in Switzerland, photo by Chen Yifei

Li Jia: I can very much relate to Yifei’s experience. It was only after coming to Europe that I came to understand the meaning of diaspora in a truly embodied way. One community that left a strong impression on me was Zurich-based Asian Future Collective (AFC), which brings together people from diverse Asian backgrounds to explore questions of migration, identity and belonging. For my exhibition ‘Constellations of Hope, Sharing Grounds,’ I invited AFC to organise a collective meal and participatory workshop. The event brought together members of Asian diasporic communities from across Switzerland and demonstrated how food can serve as a powerful tool for connection and exchange.

Concrete encounters: the everyday lives and informal networks of diasporic communities

Li Jia: Suo’er, your residency was at Château de Lavigny,  located between Lausanne and Geneva. How did the residency structure and the freedom it provided allow you to navigate between different regions, communities, and social contexts? Were there encounters that would have been difficult to access otherwise?

Suo’er: If I had stayed at the residency site itself, it would have been difficult to encounter the communities I originally intended to study. So, I deliberately travelled to different cities and regions to observe and engage with people. I found that Chinese restaurants often served as an effective entry point, but more often, the most meaningful encounters emerged through chance and serendipity.

At one public event, I met a Malaysian Chinese woman in her eighties. As a second-generation member of the Chinese diaspora, she had grown up in an English-speaking environment. However, later in life, she began to learn Mandarin, wanting to reconnect with a cultural heritage from which she had once become distant. Although she is still unable to read Chinese, she continued her studies and has transformed this personal journey of rediscovery into a cultural practice, organizing small literary discussion groups and sharing Chinese literature with her peers.

Another person who left a profound impression on me was the owner of a Chinese restaurant in Montreux. Now in her fifties, she came to Switzerland as a student in the late 1980s and eventually settled there. On the surface, she is a restaurant owner; in reality, she has also become an important source of support for many young Chinese students in the region. She helps them navigate everyday difficulties, offers companionship and conversation, and jokingly describes herself as their „godmother.“ Although she is not affiliated with any formal institution, she has become a crucial node within an informal network of care.

Another memorable encounter took place during my short stay in the Alpine village of Leukerbad. While searching for Baldwin’s former residence, a Chinese man approached me and started a conversation. I later learned that he was also a writer who had migrated to Switzerland in the 1990s. He told me that even after living in Leukerbad for decades, mastering the local language, and establishing his own livelihood, he still often felt an invisible boundary that was difficult to articulate—not one of explicit hostility, but a persistent sense of distance, as though he could never fully become „one of them.“ In this small Alpine village, these two diasporic writers—from different continents and different historical moments—seemed to echo one another in a striking way.

Li Jia: I find these stories particularly compelling. This restaurant owner is herself part of a diasporic community, yet she continues to connect with and care for newcomers. She embodies the figure of a diasporic mediator. Although she is neither a political organizer nor an artist-activist, she creates a modest yet vital infrastructure of care through everyday acts of caregiving, companionship, and labor.

A trail associated with Hermann Hesse, who often wandered these landscapes, photo by Suo’erExperiments in self-organisation: towards sustainable spaces of collectivity beyond institutions

Li Jia: Yifei, during your residency, you travelled extensively across Switzerland and connected with artist-run initiatives, archives, and self-organized cultural spaces. Which encounters were most significant for you, and how did they influence your understanding of collective practice?

Chen Yifei: My own collective practices in Berlin have, to a certain extent, been shaped by experiences of self-organization in Guangzhou and China more broadly. In Zurich, I visited an anarchist archive dedicated to underground culture, containing flyers, cassette tapes, and various materials related to subcultural movements. What impressed me most was the archive documenting underground parties in Switzerland during the 1980s. These materials made me realize the immense creativity that can emerge under conditions of repression and reminded me that many forms of cultural freedom we take for granted today were not simply given but were won through decades of underground practice and struggle.

Another anarchist space that left a profound impression on me was Black Space in the French-speaking region of Switzerland. Founded by a previous generation of activists, this autonomous space has been continuously operating for over forty years and demonstrates how long-term self-organisation can create resilient cultural communities.

I was particularly struck by the highly developed Swiss art ecosystem. Switzerland has a remarkably dense and interconnected cultural network. Both the artist-run spaces and the close relationships among institutions reflect a deeply rooted tradition of public cultural engagement. Newly arrived residents are very often actively welcomed into local networks of exchange. This culture of interpersonal connection may well be one of the most valuable aspects of the Swiss art ecosystem.

K-Set Archiv in Zurich, open on the first Thursday evening of each month. Founded in 2004, the archive documents decades of Zurich’s self-organised and underground publishing culture, with more than 15,000 items including DIY zines, cassette tapes, flyers, posters, newspapers, and other independent publications dating from the 1960s onwards, photo by Chen Yifei

Li Jia: I agree with Yifei that Switzerland’s artistic network is indeed highly developed and remarkably efficient. I would like to add another example of self-organized artistic practice. One of my favourite discoveries was Amerbach Studios in Basel, a self-governed collective space combining studios, exhibitions, publishing and community life. It demonstrated how collective ownership and long-term collaboration can create sustainable conditions for artistic practice beyond institutional frameworks.

Suo’er: My experience differs somewhat from yours. The Chinese diasporic communities I encountered in Switzerland were mostly ordinary migrants such as restaurant owners or clinic operators, rather than artists or cultural practitioners.  More importantly, diaspora itself does not automatically translate into collective solidarity.

It is precisely for this reason that self-organized Asian diasporic collectives become so important. Their significance may well lie not in representing a fixed identity, but in creating new forms of connection. For many Asians living long-term in Europe, there remains a persistent sense of in-betweenness — unable to fully return to where they came from, while not necessarily feeling a complete sense of belonging to their new society. Collective practices thus offer another possibility: they are no longer grounded in the nation-state or kinship, but form new connections through shared experience, interest, and concern. Such communities may not always be stable, nor necessarily large in scale, but they at least create a space of mutual recognition, care, and understanding.

Shared kitchen and studios at Amerbach Studios, Basel. Amerbach Studios is a shared studio complex founded, collectively operated, and collaboratively governed by a group of artists based in Basel, photo by Li JiaShared kitchen and studios at Amerbach Studios, Basel. Amerbach Studios is a shared studio complex founded, collectively operated, and collaboratively governed by a group of artists based in Basel, photo by Li JiaDiaspora as method: epistemic displacement and transregional solidarity

Li Jia: Looking back on your residency experiences, what insights or questions have stayed with you most strongly? How have they influenced the way you approach your work and made you rethink the significance of diaspora? I think the importance of diaspora lies not only in making visible the histories and communities that have long been neglected, but more importantly, in offering a perspective from which we can understand the world and engage with reality—a point of departure for alternative forms of practice. In this sense, we may call it „diaspora as method.“

The diasporic condition often involves maintaining a certain distance from established orders—neither fully belonging to one’s place of origin, nor completely integrating into the society in which one currently lives. It is precisely this condition of in-betweenness that enables us to become attentive to the blind spots of dominant narratives, the exclusions embedded within existing structures of power, and the relationships and possibilities yet to be recognized.

A bunker embedded in the Swiss landscape. Switzerland is home to more than 300,000 bunkers and protective shelters, a legacy of its defence strategy, photo by Suo’er

Chen Yifei: I strongly resonate with this idea of ‘diaspora as method.’ It was only after moving to Berlin that I began to realize, through my own lived experience, what a different form of internationalism might mean—one that is not grounded in relationships between nation-states, but emerges through concrete encounters and through building connections with those who likewise inhabit positions of migration, diaspora, or marginality.

Suo’er: My experience in Switzerland did not directly translate into a particular work, but it did transform the way I see the world. Before this residency, my writing mainly revolved around questions of home, family, and intergenerational relationships. Living in Switzerland led me to reflect more deeply on migration, mobility, borders, and identity.

I was particularly drawn to those seemingly ordinary people who rarely appear in media coverage or grand historical narratives. Yet their life trajectories, everyday experiences, and subtle emotions often reveal the complexities of diasporic experience more profoundly than major historical events. In this sense, what I gained most from this residency was not a completed project or a clear answer, but a new way of seeing.