Jules Spinatsch’s presentation at Engadin Art Talks traces his long-term photographic investigation of Davos as a geopolitical stage shaped by the World Economic Forum. Drawing on projects developed since the early 2000s, Spinatsch explains how he sought to produce independent images of security regimes, protest, and power — working outside the visual frameworks of press, police, or institutional communication. Focusing on his more recent work Davos Is a Verb, he documents the annual transformation of the town into a temporary, immersive landscape of corporate, political, and ideological branding, revealing Davos not as a closed fortress but as an open, highly choreographed arena where global narratives, economic interests, and symbolic gestures collide.
“My research was not the WEF itself, but the security situation — an examination of how to produce independent imagery that is not from embedded journalists, not from the press, not from the organisers, and not from the police.”
— Jules Spinatsch
