A brief review and shout-out to a film never seen before, because its world première was given the day after the official closing of the great Locarno Film Festival, which is held every summer on the Piazza Grande of this traditional hub of Swiss tourism.
Asino Vola (Fly, Donkey) was screened on the Sunday night August 16, following the Festival’s official closing. The day had taunted the region with rain, but ultimately delivered a dry and slightly chilly, starry night with no moon, a perfect finale to one of the world’s great film bacchanals. It was billed as a children’s film, so obviously Locarno’s Piazza Grande was filled to the brim mostly, it seemed, with the young and their parents. This was not a children’s movie only, however, it was more like a cockeyed fairytale, ageless, a touch magical, humorous, heartwarming.
Maurizio and the “flying” and talking donkey.
The story of Asino vola is quickly told: A little boy, Maurizio (Francesco Tramontana), seven years old, living in a dusty Sicilian backwater, dreams of becoming a musician and makes good thanks to a drum that he learns by proxy, since the bandleader had assigned him to a flugelhorn, which his parents simply cannot afford. As in all good stories of success, the path to the goal is really what counts, and in Maurizio’s case it is not all smooth going. So much can be expected of a movie. Continue reading “Do donkeys fly? In your dreams”
In a confederate system as diverse as Switzerland, it is hardly surprising to find that Cantons and cities occasionally engage in very local celebrations that no one else has ever heard of. There is the Chalandamarz and the Pschuuri in the Grisons, or the Bloch at Mardi Gras in Appenzell. Not to be outdone (especially by its Germanic co-confederates) , Geneva has the “Escalade,” The Climb, which has evolved into one of the main participatory spectacles in town.
Geneva is Geneva, of course, and stringent logic often seems absent from the organisation of local urban life, so the climb actually involves horizontal rather than upward mobility. Much of the event consists of people running, Marathon-like, through the city on the first Saturday in December or, if Saturday falls on the 11th, then on the second Saturday. In 2014, it was on Saturday December 6. The date, like the hare-brained configuration of the city’s public transportation, needs some clarification.
The event that spawned The Climb took place on a wintry night of 11-12 December 1602, the longest night of the year, since Genevans still used the old Julian calendar at the time. Duke Charles-Emmanuel I of Savoy had coveted the Calvinist city north of the Alps, and was hoping to force it back into the Catholic fold for religious, strategic and economic reasons. On that fateful night, a band of mercenaries managed to scale (escalader) the walls at around 2 a.m. When two sentinels ran into them, all hell broke loose. Reports say that civilians joined in, throwing heavy stuff out of windows, tables, chairs, barrels, stones, and real weapons like halberds.
The Genevans got the better of the attackers. They lost 18 men in the skirmish, 54 of the attackers were killed, 13 taken prisoner, tortured and executed. Ultimately Charles-Emmanuel signed a treaty with the city and peace was restored once and for all at the Treaty of St. Julien (a town just beyond the border in France).
Memories are made of this
A year later, the whole battle and its political setting were set to music to an epic ballad in 68 strophes in Provencal dialect, Cé qu’è lainô. The event was also immortalized in a poem, Genève delivrée, by Samuel Chappuzeau. In 1926, an association called Compagnie de 1602 started a parade to celebrate the victory. Participants come in gaudy period costumes; there are drummers, fife-players, weapons-bearers, a hangman and other period figures. Today, the parade, which is held on Sunday after the races, ends at the door of the Cathedral St. Pierre in the old town with speeches exalting the Republic, freedom, and so on.
The Escalade races were started in 1978. They now last almost all day, with participants broken down into different categories running set courses in a staggered schedule. Ages range from the “Poussins” and “Poussines” (literally chicks, boys and girls born in 2005-6) to Hommes VI or Femmes VI, men and women born before 1942. The length of the run goes from 1.8 km for the youngest runners, to 7.2 km for the older ones. This year drew 32,150 participants. All races begin and end in the Parc des Bastions right under the walls of the old town.
Walking and Nordic Walking have also been introduced for more comfortable sportspeople 10 years of age and above. The 8-km course begins in Veyrier and ends in the Parc des Bastion. The final race is the Course du Duc (the Duke’s Course) and is the toughest, naturally, since the Duke lost the battle: 17.5 km.
There are fees for the runners, and those running the longer itineraries will have to get medical certificates. For more details, please visit www.escalade.ch. The money paid goes to maintaining the costumes and organizing the events.
The final race on Saturday is simply called “Marmite”, or Cauldron and comes in two categories, youth and adult. The runners complete their nearly 3.5-km itinerary in crazy garb. There are no real winners here, but whoever comes first in this fantastical dash, will have their name and pictures published in the local paper, the Tribune de Genève (along with the serious runners).
What’s in a cauldron?
The chaudron is ubiquitous in Escalade season. Throughout the festivities, spectators and participants are regaled with vegetable soup cooked in great cauldrons sometimes on an open fire. It’s a very pleasant and fortifying dish in the damp and frigid days of early December. Escalade parties are held during this time to which children come disguised and singing a ditty that gives a blow-by-blow account of the “battle”. They will occasionally do something resembling trick-or-treating, i.e., knock on people’s door, sing that very same ditty, an request candy or coin. On one evening, children, parents and staff are invited to contribute vegetables to a big cauldron of soup, which is enjoyed usually with bread and some sweets.
Eat your (marzipan) vegetables for the sake of the Republic
And for a few weeks prior to the Escalade, pastry shops, confectioners and supermarkets sell chocolate cauldrons decorated with the coat-of-arms of the city and filled with marzipan vegetables. The way to eat them is to break the cauldron with a stick or a knife while hollering valiantly: “Ainsi périssent les ennemis de la république!” (”Thus perish the enemies of the Republic!”)
Those raised on Asterix may get the wrong idea. The brave and independent Genevans did not beat back the Savoyards intruders by dint of a magic vegetable soup. Somewhere on the line a story emerged from the mists of history, that one Mère Royaume, living near the city gates was in her kitchen cooking a cauldron of vegetable and rice soup. Hearing the enemy in the streets, she carried the heavy pot to the window and heaved it onto the hapless invaders.
Mère Royaume was a real person. She was Catherine Cheynel, born in Lyon. She and her second husband, a maker of tin pots, were Protestants and escaped to Geneva soon after the massacre of St. Bartholomew (August 1572). By 1602, she was 60 years of age and had given birth to 14 children, few of whom had survived. The idea of her dumping hot soup on an enemy apparently comes from Verse 29 of the epic Cé qu’è lainô mentioned above. But history has many such modest heroes, like the women of Eger in Hungary who threw boiling fat on the attacking Turks.
Let them eat soup
As a journalist, I must wonder: What was she doing cooking vegetables soup at 2 a.m.? And would she, as a Protestant Genevan, waste food that way? Really? It is difficult to imagine. I suspect that on waking and hearing the ruckus, she grabbed the first thing at hand … under, or close to, her bed and hurled that out the window. So whosoever came up with the marmite idea has done us all a great service in Geneva. Imagine thousands of Genevans screaming: “Ainsi périssent les ennemies de la République!” while standing around steaming chamber pots.
Real or not, it’s a nice story, and it gets everyone out and about eating healthy soups. In an interview with Le Temps in 2009, Catherine Santschi, state archivist pointed out a more reasonable explanation for the victory, one that has repercussions to this day: “It wasn’t Mère Royaume and her cauldron of soup that protected Geneva, but rather the fact that the citizens kept their weapons at home. They woke up in the middle of the night and were able to fight right away. If they had had to go to the arsenal first, the battle would have ended differently.”
Whatever the history, Geneva loves its Escalade, and for good reason. It’s a heart-warming, belly-filling feast, with so many parties, no one has to have a bad conscience for having fun. People from all walks of life have a chance to rub elbows in a congenial atmosphere. In some ways, too, it celebrates the victory over Catholicism in what was then a strictly Protestant-Calvinistic city. Paradoxically, it now serves to conveniently condense and celebrate Carnival, St. Nicholas and other religious/profane festivities that Calvin and his dour and sour successors had wiped off the calendar.
The February 9, 2014, referendum that garnered a “yes” to stop mass immigration into Switzerland and replace it with a system of quotas has sent ripples, even shock waves, throughout Europe. The initiative passed by a slim margin of 50.3% to 49.7%, with participation at just over 55% of eligible voters, and people in both camps are nursing hangovers these days, from different spirits, as it were.
The issue on the table was by no means new. Societies the world round are occasionally gripped by nativist impulses that target foreigners, and Switzerland is no exception. In the 1970s, one James (sic) Schwarzenbach launched an initiative against “over-foreignization,” turning what appeared to be a groundswell of backing from several Swiss cantons into a political party. But the initiative failed and the party ultimately fizzled.
The current initiative was put to the Swiss people via the Swiss People’s Party (SVP/UDC), which is a lot more savvy than the late Schwarzenbach, and, of course, operating in a different era. It has produced a number of rhetorically noisy and cunning campaigns in the past already, mostly designed to elicit a knee-jerk reaction to anything foreign. One recalls the famous anti-minaret campaign of 2009, which drew the ire of the EU, or the “black sheep” campaign of 2010 to throw out foreigners who had committed felonies.
At first glance
Both earlier initiatives won, thanks in part to the ruckus raised by the posters whose communication boiled down to crude demagogery. Simple colors, simplistic icons, oafish but graspable message. And effective. In fact, the People’s Party’s “black sheep” poster even found use by the Neo-Nazi NPD party in the German state of Hessen, by Italy’s Neo-Fascist Lega Nord, and by some other extremists in the Czech Republic. The poster in Switzerland showed three white sheep kicking a black sheep off the Swiss flag, and it raised hackles all the way to the United Nations.
The present referendum’s artwork also grabbed the headlines but for other reasons: the apple tree whose roots are crushing Switzerland with an inscription proclaiming the damage of mass immigration was actually borrowed from Economiesuisse, the Swiss Business Federation, which opposed the initiative together with syndicates and other industrial associations. Its apple tree – used in campaigns since 2000, no less – was intended to show how relations and treaties with European Union were benefiting Switzerland (the apples). What this had to do with the concerns of the Swiss people about immigration was not immediately clear and either confued or alienated potential voters. “I was against the initiative,” said a friend of mine, who is very engaged in Switzerland’s political debates, “but I couldn’t vote for the Economiesuisse proposal, because they seemed to be supporting the kind of wage dumping that big business would like to have. But no one is taking the issue of immigration seriously and addressing it, and the SVP/UDC did.”
Battle lines
The People’s Party does choose its issues well. The topic is always a little taboo, hence it attracts lots of attention, which is the cardinal rule in breaking out of websmog. Their initiatives can usually be summed up in a single short phrase and they go to the gut or the jugular, or both, ideal for the 140-character society. And the Party’s strategists have a musician’s gift for timing, they know when to simply let their issues ferment and simmer. The Internet and papers do the rest, especially the comment sections of newspapers and blogs. This permits all kinds of nonsense to be uttered without the higher-ups catching any flak. Vague connections are made between immigration (or any other bugaboo) and the lack of affordable housing, the high price of real estate, the filled trains, traffic jams, failures in schools, crime, noise in the streets, dirt, crooked bankers, ugly architecture, and lost jobs, etc.
On the other hand, countering these gregarious views is inherently difficult and often requires moral, ethical and even legal arguments that most voters are hardly inclined to follow after a hard day’s work, what with all the mesmerizing entertainment provided by our daily screens.
And, finally, perhaps at the core of the issue, there is the subtext of unemployment, which is one of the main Swiss worries, especially, when it comes to immigration. Life here is expensive, and maintaining a high standard of living is not that easy. While the country’s own jobless rate is very low (averaging around 3.1%) and economic growth is high, what people actually perceive is different and they have the proof just beyond Switzerland’s borders.
It’s no picnic out there, if we are to believe the media. Europe’s economy is sluggish, unemployment is over 10% for the whole EU, earnings are low (though social benefits excellent). It all seems very threatening, like some Fritz Lang movie of the 1920s. Foreign nationals are needy and greedy and pressing at Switzerland’s gold-strewn shores, or so it seems … And the ghastly conflict in Syria, the unrest in North Africa, the hordes in the East waiting to pounce, the Chinese plagiarists are all giant shadows performing some ghastly economic Totentanz in the background. The result is a fortress mentality, which is aggravated every time the United States IRS puts a gun to the head of the Swiss banking system, or the German or French tax authorities get a hold of a few CDs with the names and account numbers of German tax evaders.
So the immigration issue may well be getting mixed in the minds of many with the whole cluster of other insecurities and uncertainties that have become the electrifying juice of our capitalist system, the Damocles sword held over the Average Joe and Jane to keep them on the straight and narrow, no complaining, please, your job is next on the block. So what some Swiss voters are saying then is: leave us alone, we’ve done our bit, now you do yours and let us get along with our lives, things were better before. The fact that cities like Zurich, Geneva or Basel actually voted against the initiative suggests as much. Geneva! Which is literally overrun by foreigners of all stripe, but could not really survive without them.
After-maths
But vote they did, and now the chickens are fluttering and clucking near the roost. The Nays are disappointed and shocked that the measure, which seemed doomed to failure just a few weeks ago, actually passed. The Ayes, for their part, are gloating but with that slightly sour “I-told-you-so” attitude. Many of their comments in the papers, on television, and even in public, suggest that they did not quite understand the implications of their yes to the no immigration. Or worse yet, they don’t really care either way, since the point was to show the world that the Swiss system of direct democracy still works and that they will not let themselves be subjected to a “dictate” from Europe – a kind of political dog whistle often blown by the right wingers in the country, and one that is sure to garner votes.
Unfortunately, though, the laws in place are not that simple. The Swiss government can’t just text or tweet the EU Commissioner and break off the engagement. The CH-EU relationship is far more complex. In the run-up to the referendum already, the EU had been sounding the alarm about Swiss voters deciding to roll back the “free movement of people” across borders, a right written into the first set of Bilateral Agreements that went into force in 2002 and was extended to new EU members in 2005 and 2009 respectively. Negotiations on including Croatia in the Bilaterals (which joined the EU on July 1st, 2013) are now threatened, said Richard Jones, EU Ambassador to Switzerland , and with it a number of research and exchange programs, like Horizon2020 and the Erasmus+ program, which facilitates all sorts of professional and academic exchanges across EU borders. So opportunities for young, talented and ambitious Swiss individuals may have just taken a blow… if, as the Germans would say, the food is eaten as hot as it is cooked…
The European reaction to the vote was swift and categorical. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius and Swedish Foreign Minister Brigitta Ohlsson spoke of reconsidering EU-CH relations, Italian Foreign Minister Emma Bonino said she would put the issue on the table with the EU Council, and Jean Asselborn from Luxembourg warned EU countries of striking separate deals with Switzerland.
The Swiss are an important partner for the EU, said Viviane Reding a few weeks before the vote, “but the EU is also an important partner for Switzerland.”
Talk has been of invoking the “guillotine clause,” which would call into question all the benefits of the Bilateral Treaties that Switzerland managed to negotiate after saying no to membership in the European Economic Area in December 1992 – curiously by a majority of 50.3%. The consequences could be quite drastic in many different areas, including technology, agriculture, education, environment, security and cooperation, even road traffic. In short everything that made CH a virtual member of the EU without having to deal with some of the political shenanigans and without losing its sacred right to direct democracy.
In an interview with the Tages Anzeiger, National Counsellor Christian Wasserfallen from the Free Democrats, a member of the Energy Commission, pointed out that the treaty on electrical power trading with Europe is in jeopardy, and the threat could extend to a variety of other industries, from the chemical – not news Basel wants to hear – to financial services. “Our companies have a lot of value creation in the balance,” he said, “but how the initiative will be implemented is still an open question.”
Theoretical victory
For its part, the populist right wing is in ecstasy. Their feeling was summed up by Markus Somm, Editor-in-Chief of the Basler Zeitung daily. Pride comes before the fall, he remarked, and that he feels led to the incredibly weak argumentation by Economiesuisse and its fellow oppositionists, including the Federal Council, no less: “Something historical happened. By their approval of the mass immigration initiative – against the will of almost all parties, federations, media, syndicates and pundits – the Swiss dared to do something extraordinary. A tectonic shift is happening. For the first time since their rejection of the EEA [European Economic Area] over twenty years ago, our country is taking the risk of muddying the relationship to our most important trading partner, the EU.”
Whether that is the case remains to be seen, the barking at the present time is loud, but whether the bite ever really comes is questionable. When all is said and done, the little Alpine confederacy has gone up against European powers before. And even the most vociferous EU politician knows that the nation is ruled by consensus. Even the anti-European forces will have to recognize that the relationship with the EU is symbiotic and in no way parasitic. And the forces opposing initiative will also have to recognize that not everyone in Switzerland was prepared to take on 80,000 new residents per year.
Paradise…. only for the few Lucky ones (and the rich)
At any rate, the federal government now has three years to put some kind of contingency system in place. That leaves enough time to finagle, argue, twist arms, take names, find carpets to sweep things under, create complications, exceptions, and appease. The country is somewhat divided, of course, with inner-Swiss cantons The president of the Geneva State Council, François Longchamp, told the local Tribune de Genève, that separate conditions will have to be met for the Vaud and Geneva because of the enormous number of international firms and organizations that have settled around Lake Geneva and that require highly qualified personnel. “They [these Cantons] said no to the end of free movement.” So those who shut the door are just going to have to take on the consequences.” His fellow State Councillor of the Canton of Vaud, Pascal Broulis was also clear: “Any regulation will have to take an open and a closed Switzerland into account.” These Cantons, after all, provide the Confederacy with considerable income from the employment they create. Even Schwarzenbach had allowed for a higher percentage of foreigners for Geneva (25%, and 10% for the rest of the country).
And now, with the negotiating table full of shards and loud words, some elasticity may be showing on the part of the Europeans. Richard Jones suggested in the above-mentioned interview: “The ball is in the Swiss court. … The relationship is important for both of us. No one is ready to cut ties, but we must find a viable path.” That sounds conciliatory, in a very oblique manner.
Playing the field
In the end, this all plays perfectly into the hands of the People’s Party. Their anti-European and anti-foreign rhetoric has leavened their shares over the past decade with people who seem disgruntled at a society being transformed by globalization, while reaping the benefits as well. The strategists – including the rather brilliant billionaire Christoph Blocher – have managed to play the victim card over and over again with initiatives that always give off a musty odor of xenophobia couched in reason. That is not good advertising for a country with so much at stake abroad even if “money has no odor,” as the French say. Until now it still has not affected the economy in any tangible manner, hence even people like Mr. Blocher have not suffered any financial setbacks. But it does raise the question: if Switzerland is so timorous with its booming economy, what will it be like when the big bust comes?
It’s all about trade…. a barge travelng from Basel to Rotterdam on the Rhine
The anti-immigration initiative is serving the SVP/UDC as a kind of test balloon to see if the “foreigners issue” can be used for the parliamentary elections in 2015. The party would like to extend its majority – which recent polls actually suggested was dipping in favour of smaller parties. And Europe continues to serve as an easy target: if it doesn’t react to the populist SVP/UDC, it looks as if it is ignoring Switzerland. If it does react, then it comes across as school-marmisch. And the last thing the Swiss want to hear is a bevy of European officials browbeating them for ur-Swiss values and customs, particularly their sacred direct democracy. On the other hand, not all those who voted yes to the initiative are pro-People’s Party. And at some point the less vociferous and more urbane segments of the electorate may decide that they have done enough for the nativists, and it is time to let Switzerland back into the race.
Nicolas Hayek died the way he probably wanted to, enjoying his daily leisure time at his desk in Biel. He was a grand entrepreneur in a class of his own. If anything came close to the art of business, it was what he did, and like all great artists, whatever he did seemed easy. Of course he could toot his publicity horn as much as anyone – did I say horn? I meant a five-manual organ – but that is the business of truly loving your business. Furthermore, his grandson, Mark Hayek, once told me in an interview that his grandpa relaxed on Sundays by doing the books. His concern for his industries and the people working for him was genuine, and that is what made him one of Switzerland’s most trusted public figures. When he said “sustainability,” it was not just fig leaf stuff, it meant something, because he believed in it. Swatch Group managed to navigate the massive recession of 2008-2009 without shedding many jobs. That must have given Nicolas Hayek a feeling of success, if not elation.
As a journalist, one who keeps a very low profile, I was thrilled to be able to write about Nicolas Hayek following an interview he granted me at the Baselworld 2008 watch fair. I wanted to discuss his project for a solar-powered fuel-cell car. I was given a 20-minute slot and stayed 45. Within that short time span we covered all sorts of subjects, from his Marie-Antoinette watch, to green technology, passing by the Middle East. There are several statements he made that I have never forgotten, in particular his attributing success in business to a CEO’s ability to motivate workers. Ironically, at around the same time, I – who knows Pittsfield, MA, and the social and environmental disaster area left behind by GE in what was their company town – was asked to go to a press conference given by Jack Welch and write about Neutron Jack (the article appeared under the title Jurassic Jack). It was like listening to a Mahler’s 8th Symphony and following it up by chopsticks played at supersonic speed.
So without further ado …. Nicolas Hayek as I humbly saw him.
If an adult male would walk around saying he believes in Santa Claus, he would probably end up spending some time under observation at the nearest booby hatch. Or receiving medication, as befits our zeitgeist. But when Nicolas Hayek said so, ears pricked up, eyes lost their glaze, brains fine-tuned their reception mode. Not because anyone thinks that he really believes in some fellow with a beard and dressed in a red cloak distributing presents from a sled pulled by reindeers. Rather, Hayek, founder of Hayek Engineering, co-founder of Swatch Group and the impulse behind Smartcars, is revealing one of the secrets of his success as an entrepreneur. Continue reading “Man of the People – Nicolas Hayek”
Like every industry, the watch industry likes to speak of innovations. The definition of that word is really in the eye of the beholder.Some are business moves that could shift the general manufacturing paradigm. Because the industry itself has
The One Week “Water” featuring the Strom’s new movement
its own special entropy, where the chaos side of the graph is represented by diversity and this is leading to some genuine innovation. I am referring to the creation of in-house movements. The smallest company with a movement is Armin Strom. The master himself has passed the 70 mark and just powers away without need for external inspiration. The company’s brand new ARM09 movement has been used for the One Week collection. Its modern design is in sharp contrast to Armin Strom’s legendary skeletonized watches, which suggest the voluble baroque decor of Bavarian Catholic churches.
Armin Strom still does the skeletonizing himself.
The “Clef du Temps” by the Confrérie des Horlogers, just to prove it can be done
Hublot, too, opened a manufacture in the industrial zone of Nyon last year, which is now producing the Unico movement. Like them or not, the muscular Bangs and the playful Tutti Fruttis are instantly identifiable timepieces and have their very committed fans. CEO Jean-Claude Biver has steered the brand to glory, navigating a bold course straight through the reefs of the Great Recession. A rugged and outspoken warrior of the industry, he wisely gave space to members of the former BNB movement company and brought its select Confrérie des Horlogers on board. So Hublot’s new collection includes the Confrérie’s bullet-shaped “Liberty” watches and the Hublotized “Clef du Temps,” that outlandish confection of diamonds, with a vertical tourbillon visible on the side and an impish complication allowing the user to slow down time for a while. Perhaps a sly comment on the absurdly frenetic pace of our contemporary life.
The techno-vations
TAGHeuer’s unfinished Pendelum Concept could become a pit…
The other approach to innovation is to go right to the heart of the matter and change something in the fundamental technology of the watch. This can be quite radical. Let’s mention first of all TAGHeuer, which has been working on replacing the “spring thing” with an engine driven by a permanent magnet of sorts. The “Pendulum Concept” is still being tinkered with, but should it become viable, I am assured, it will remain a sort of niche product and not invade the industry the way quartz did. But the mere idea of electricity inside a mechanical watch (even in the form of magnetism) could raise a few hackles. TAGHeuer has called this little beast a “harmonious oscillator.”
Rudis Sylva’s Harmonious Oscillator, like playing the Minute waltz with one hand
But the TAGHeuer invention is not the only one on the market with that name: After lots of timetable shifting, I met Jacky Epitaux from Rudis Sylva at the Ramada’s third-story bar for an almost conspiratorial look at a mechanism also known as a “harmonious oscillator.” One could almost imagine the ghost of Sidney Greenstreet there looking over our shoulder trying to steel a small but valuable industrial secret. Rather than no spring, this oscillator has two! They are mounted on meshing wheels and mirror each other, so they open and close alternatively and in opposite directions. The point is to cancel the effect of gravity, not just compensate for it as with the regular tourbillon. The system is intriguing, and looking at the oscillator through the loupe feels like trying to play Chopin’s “Minute” waltz with one hand.
Hamilton Pulsomatic, an ingenious hybrid
Finally, with the 70s booming again, one wonders how could a mechanical watch avoid the curse of digital. No, I am not referring to de Grisogono’s somewhat meretricious mechanical digital dial, but rather to Hamilton‘s rebuilt version of the first solid-state wristwatch ever, the Pulsar. Forty years later, it is back again in bigger and bolder as the Pulsomatic, but it uses an automatic movement to drive a generator delivering an astounding 120 days power reserve. A hybrid for Toyota owners, perhaps?
De Grisogono — for the 21st-century technoid man
Unique means one of a kind
In the end, Baselworld is heaven, and it is hell. On just a few acres there are a sea of watches to be seen — and I have not even touched the jewelry section — and far too little time to explore them properly. Every stylistic idea is represented, the classics and crazies, the sporty and sportive, the cool and the hot, the dressy and the glitzy, the sober and the off-the-perch, the vanilla and jalapeño. There are entire lines of ladies watches, whereby thanks perhaps to the weakening of the Schwarzenegger gene, many men’s watches have become a little more androgynous and are drawing female buyers – but this is another story altogether. The market for diamond encrustations that make some timepieces look as if they could be used to grate a 36-month old Parmesan is going strong, obviously, but there is something to say for a masculine watch arousing latent male personality aspects. (Perhaps if men would wear some made-for-women watches, the world would be a little less violent. Just a thought.)
Of course, luxury is still high on the agenda, but it seems to have become more introspective rather than self-conscious. The owner knows the value, maybe a coterie of family and friends will be in on the secret, and maybe the fan with a quick eye might realize he or she has just seen a Vianney Halter or van der Klaauw flashing by. Yes, a new sense of modesty might be an excellent opportunity for the independent watchmakers, who were especially hard hit by the cash drain. In some ways, these are the industry’s genuine visionaries and artists, whose pieces not only reflect the paradigm, but do a great deal to push its fulcrum into new and as-of-yet undiscovered territory. Twelve of these masters have been beautifully portrayed in a brand new book by top horological journalist Elisabeth Doerr and photographer Ralf Baumgarten, a must have for any watch collector or connoisseur (Twelve Faces of Time, available at teNeues ).
In the machine room of the Jean Dunand Palace
At any rate, it is among this particular — and at times peculiar — brood of out-of-the -boxers, autodidacts or ultimate purists that one can find works of genius, works that leap off the wrist, as it were, especially to the discerning watchista. It may be the colorful, laughing pieces of Alain Silberstein, or the mighty Horological Machines by Max Büsser and his friends, where the steam-punk meets sci-fi. Another piece of gentrified steampunk – combining Charlie Chaplin, Henri Ford and Fritz Lang, to the tune of Honegger’s Pacific 231 – is the “Palace” from Jean Dunand Pièces Uniques, an unabashed celebration of the industrial age, with little chains, cogs, dials and subdials reminiscent of the meters on a locomotive,the nameplate suggesting a fishplate.
Itay Noy’s CIty Squares: Wear your hometown on your wrist
A soft-spoken philosopher of time is the Israeli Itay Noy, who customizes very affordable watches by putting famous city squares on the dials, or working with hallucinogenic fractals. He was not the only self-taught craftsman there: Konstantin Chaykin from St. Petersburg had a stupendous clock displaying the Jewish calendar day, a Jewish watch, the Decalogue, that displays specifically Jewish time units – helek and regaim – on the rear. Chaykin also created a Moslem clock, but the work he seems especially proud of is a unique clock that manages to display the Orthodox Easter. How different from the his booth neighbor Rainer Nienaber,a genius of the retrograde, who had a watch on display that doesn’t really tell the time, unless you wish to live in a purely decimal world.
Konstantin Chaykin putting the spiritual into time
Prima inter pares – counter-entropy
Applying the KISS Principle to horology in Prescher’s (very) mysterious tourbillon
In our age of neue Sachlichkeit, of reductio ad sanem at least, it may seem difficult to find a real show stopper. But maybe we will have to get used to doing without the type of Hollywoodesque hype that has marked the past decades and discover the value of simplicity, of unplugged, of focus. Peace may be more boring than high jinx and wars, but it opens many more possibilities. And so, on day four, while dragging my suitcase full of brochures and electronics through Hall five, between Nienaber and Chaykin (see above), I stumbled across a watch that made me loosen my tie, take a deep breath and rub my eyes. It was a delicate, completely transparent creation with a double axis tourbillon seemingly floating in space right in the middle of the almost square “picture.” The hours and minutes appear on two barrels at the top of the watch separated by a mesmerizing three-dimensional moon, shiny on one side and mat on the other. The watch is reversible. The date is read at 6 o’clock, as it were, on a semicircular barrel that also serves as an oscillating weight for the automatic.So where is the movement? Tucked laterally under the bezel in the side. The author of this phenomenal piece of equipment, the Mysterious Double Axis Automatic Tourbillon is the German watchmaker Thomas Prescher, whose atelier is in Twann close to Biel, Switzerland. If any timepiece at the fair reflected a new sense of concentration on the essentials and a return to sobriety and pure art, it was this one. It should be a pleasure for anyone to be on that wagon.
(This concludes the very personal overview of Baselworld 2010. I tried here to find themes and patterns, not to describe a maximum of brands. So apologies are due for the absence of many eminent watches and brands, and for not mentioning all the extraordinary watchmakers whose work was displayed at the fair. In months to come, I hope to correct that problem through articles and reports).
Asino Vola (Fly, Donkey) was screened on the Sunday night August 16, following the Festival’s official closing. The day had taunted the region with rain, but ultimately delivered a dry and slightly chilly, starry night with no moon, a perfect finale to one of the world’s great film bacchanals. It was billed as a children’s film, so obviously Locarno’s Piazza Grande was filled to the brim mostly, it seemed, with the young and their parents. This was not a children’s movie only, however, it was more like a cockeyed fairytale, ageless, a touch magical, humorous, heartwarming.
ited Nations.
