Opaque communication by embassies, a minimal press office, political representatives meeting with the CEOs of multinational companies, Bilderberg brings together completely conventional and ordinary individuals who discuss everyday problems… Every year since 2013 Giacomo Bianchetti has set off to take photographs on the fringes of this very secret informal meeting consisting of about 130 very influential members from the worlds of politics, economics and the media. Giacom [...]
Opaque communication by embassies, a minimal press office, political representatives meeting with the CEOs of multinational companies, Bilderberg brings together completely conventional and ordinary individuals who discuss everyday problems… Every year since 2013 Giacomo Bianchetti has set off to take photographs on the fringes of this very secret informal meeting consisting of about 130 very influential members from the worlds of politics, economics and the media. Giacomo Bianchetti structures his photographs with the GPS readout of his movements, and all the data he manages to collect about Swiss participants at the summit. We always talk about power controlling citizens, but here we have the opposite situation of a citizen who wants to observe those in power and is constantly pushed back to the physical boundaries imposed by the security of the summit, which is held in a luxury hotel in a different country every year: the United Kingdom, Denmark, Austria, Germany, and in 2017 Washington. Bilderberg has no detailed programme, but every year divulges a list of ten or so subjects discussed. For 2017 it is not uninteresting to note a few of them: Can globalisation be slowed down?; Jobs, income and unrealised expectations, or indeed The war on information.
Giacomo Bianchetti (*1982, Locarno, lives and works in Lausanne). After taking a business diploma and spending a few years as a social worker, he graduated from the Ecole Supérieure de Photographie in Vevey in 2013. His personal work is based on direct physical confrontation with forms of power. His approach tests the legal limits between private and public spaces, also invoking economic and business problems. Since the start of his initiative centred on Bilderberg in 2013, Neoglobalidad is his second collaboration with the CPG after Caméra(Auto)Contrôle in 2016. His photographs and installations were recently shown at REGENERATION 3; Photoforum Pasquart, Bienne; CoalMine gallery Winterthur; and will soon be on display at the Biennale dell’immagine, Chiasso.
Photography : Giacomo Banchetti, Bilderberg 2017