Swiss-born philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau believed that “No man has any natural authority over his fellow men.” The idea was central to The Social Contract, his 1762 publication that forwarded the idea of a “general will,” under which individuals act towards a collective desire for a greater impartial good. There is no singular authority or control – rather, this “will” forwards itself towards realization.

    Natasha Gill, a history professor at New York University, teaches a class on the Enlightenment that incorporates Rousseau’s philosophies. She illustrates the concept of general will through an anecdote from her childhood in Switzerland, when an intersection was modified after a child was hit by a car. “Think about all the individual interests that would come into play in America – a business might lose customers, or commuters might be late for work,” she said. “In Switzerland, there was just a sense of what needed to be done for the greater good. It was like an unspoken agreement.”

    But Professor Gill also finds that this general will is fading from Swiss politics. Switzerland is a federal republic, operating on three levels. There are nearly 3,000 communes within the 26 cantons that form the Swiss Confederation, most of the power lying within the communes and cantons themselves. Ambassador Raymond Loretan, Consul General of Switzerland in New York, notes that “Switzerland was the first and only country that joined the U.N. by asking its people through a referendum.” Just over half of the voters, 55 percent, supported the referendum, which Ambassador Loretan does not find particularly surprising.

    “For many years now, Switzerland’s population has been split almost evenly for and against a strongerinternational commitment by Switzerland,” he said. As Professor Gill suggests, Switzerland increasingly is becoming a country of contradictions. It is progressive yet conservative, giving birth to the revolutionary Dada movement in the early twentieth century, yet granting women’s suffrage in 1971. It is opinionated yet impartial, joining the U.N. as an act of involvement, yet maintaining a stance of neutrality. But the near-even divisions Loretan is finding in Switzerland's voting population point less towards neutrality, and more towards a duality of Swiss opinions.

    While the government of Switzerland might assume politically neutral stances, the citizens are painting a more complicated and diverse picture, illustrated by the four national languages, a moving away from organized religion, and increasing immigration. There is more to Switzerland than the simplicity of Heidi, the idyllic beauty of the Alps, and the tradition of yodeling. The first Swiss Peaks Festival, being held from March 3 to April 30 in New York City, is an attempt to shatter some of these stereotypes. The goal, according to Swiss Peaks’ Project Manager Corinne Erni, is to “create more awareness of Switzerland by showcasing a contemporary, innovative, diverse and surprising Switzerland.” One of these provocative showcases is a photography exhibit at New York University’s Grey Art Gallery, entitled “Not Neutral.”

    “This isn’t cuckoo clocks, chalets, and chocolates,” said Grey Art Gallery Director Lynn Gumpert, pointing to Claudio Moser’s photograph Otterbach. The picture is almost five feet tall by eight feet wide, the center nearly pitch black, tiled with two foggy patches of light. The photograph only comes into focus upon stepping back, and seeing the pieces of jagged glass that line the broken store window Moser has captured in time. His photographs are stark – anti-idyllic landscapes that leave the viewer with an unsettling feeling. Similarly, the other photographs in the exhibit raise questions about the authenticity of art, the beauty of everyday life, immigration, and consumerism.

    “The temptation, with an exhibition like this,” adds Gumpert, “is to try and find an inherent ‘Swissness’ in all these works.” For example, what does Moser’s photograph of a broken window say about Switzerland? Or what about Hans Danuser’s blown-up photographs of frozen embryos is particularly Swiss? But the questions, Gumpert notes, all lead to dead ends. The only unifying thread is that all the artists are Swiss.

    But even this – the notion of Swiss identity – is complicated by the artists chosen for the “Not Neutral” exhibit. Of the nine artists represented, four were not born in Switzerland. Daniele Buetti, who explores the definition of self through commercial advertising, was born in Germany. Cat Tuong Nguyen, born in Vietnam, explores topics as diverse as the Tokyo subway stations and shadowy, nondescript forests. Marco Poloni, born in Amsterdam and a resident of both Rome and Geneva, traces the imaginary journey of an asylum-seeking in Italy near the border of Switzerland. And Peter Tillesen, also born in Germany, examines the beauty of everyday life through a series of color photographs ranging from construction sites to supermarkets.

    All nine artists use photography not only as a form of visual art, but also as a form of political and social critique. And while Gumpert notes the criticism may not be new – consumerism, immigration, technology and industrialization – the emergence of such critique among a diverse group of artists in Switzerland is noteworthy. “It’s a real contradiction. In some ways, Swiss art is behind the times,” Gumpert said. “But Switzerland also has more galleries per square mile than any other European country.”

    Professor Gill finds another contradiction in the arts, between creativity and conformity, that possibly is a result of the general will. “There’s not a lot of room for individualism like there is in America,” she notes, her father having said he sometimes felt stifled in Switzerland. She cites the Collection de l’Art Brut in Lausanne, a museum devoted to the works of outsiders, psychotics, and the criminally insane. “It’s not surprising there’s a collection like this in Switzerland, a country with such high incidences of alcoholism and suicide,” she said. According to the International Academy for Suicide Research, as of 1998, Switzerland ranked among the 20 countries with the highest suicide rates in the world, the United States at 31st. It is a jarring juxtaposition to American conceptions of Switzerland as a haven of tranquility and simplicity.

    Part of demystifying Switzerland might lie in finding its commonalities to America. As Ambassador Loretan notes, “Our countries are often referred to as ‘Sister Republics’ because our respective forefathers exchanged ideas on constitutional matters and we both practice political systems of direct democracy.” And for Corinne Erni, part of the motivation behind the Swiss Peaks Festival is “promoting better understanding between our people, our mentalities, and our ways of thinking.” After learning that many Swiss musicians canceled their participation in the festival as a political statement, she was optimistic when those who attended told her they were pleasantly surprised to find many Americans opposed to the war in Iraq, among other commonalities. Perhaps in the end, just as trying to singularize American views was an oversimplification on the part of the Swiss musicians, our simply calling Switzerland “neutral” as a whole marginalizes the dichotomy of voices that has been proliferating there.