Civil Defence Shelters

Safe Havens

Civil Defence Shelters in Switzerland

Shelters against imaginary wars and atomic bomb explosions, imaginary dangers and poisons, and catastrophes, natural and unnatural alike, safe havens with clean filtered air, decontaminated water and bunks to lie down and tables to sit at and a shower and subterranean hospitals, fully equipped and ready with medical supplies and operating tables protected by thick steel doors and command posts and maps hanging on the walls and telephone switch-boards and kitchens and escape hatches and ever ready auxiliary diesel generators and stores of gas masks and posters of majestic Swiss landscapes on the walls. But then again, one never knows …

I perceive this work as probing into the national identity of the Swiss, into their worlds, their inner sanctums, their subterranean and concealed safe havens.

Juraj Lipscher, 2003