Pro Helvetia funds five international co-creation projects across Switzerland and partner countries; long-term cross-cultural collaboration across borders

Pro Helvetia funds five international co-creation projects across Switzerland and partner countries; long-term cross-cultural collaboration across borders

Co-creation and artistic practice - Pro Helvetia

Nota:Questo post non è disponibile in italiano.

What is the foundation of an equitable collaboration? How does working together influence artistic practice? What challenges do partners encounter along the way? Partners from five supported Co‑creation projects share their experiences.

Artistic collaboration takes many forms. It can grow out of long‑term relationships or begin with a single encounter; it can lead to performances, tools, materials or shared ways of working; and it often unfolds across different cultural, political and geographic contexts.

SEESAW – Jasmine Morand (Switzerland) and Shaymaa Shoukry (Egypt)

SEESAWis a choreographic duet that explores encounter, balance and confrontation between two bodies shaped by different cultural and political realities. Developed through reciprocal residencies in Cairo and Vevey, the project focuses on face‑to‑face presence and the space between bodies as a political and poetic terrain. Rather than foregrounding difference, the artists work from shared vulnerability, negotiating movement, proximity and responsibility through continuous dialogue. The contrasting artistic scenes and freedoms of Egypt and Switzerland form an integral part of the work, informing both its form and its questions about borders, intimacy and agency.

In 2022,Shaymaa Shoukryparticipated in Pro Helvetia’s artists-in-residency programme, undertaking a residency at the Dansometre Vevey, whereJasmine Morandis the artistic director. In 2025, they received support for their Co-creation projectSEESAW. In this context, Jasmine undertook a two-week research visit to Cairo at the Takshina Goethe Institute, while Shaymaa completed a two-week residency and open studio showing at Dansometre Vevey. Currently, they are planning the next phases of the project’s development and production.

Tuning, digital instruments and post-traditional music in Africa and Europe – Basile Huguenin‑Virchaux (Switzerland) and Samuel Karugu (Kenya)

This long-term collaboration investigates how East African musical tunings can be incorporated into contemporary digital music practices. Working between Kenya and Switzerland, the artists aim to put into practice ideas they have been developing together for nearly a decade. The project combines DIY instrument building, live performances, an album of music and open-source digital tools.

Samuel KaruguandBasile Huguenin‑Virchauxfirst met in 2015 through an online forum dedicated to Pure Data programming software. In 2023, they began worked together in Neuchâtel duringSamuel’s research trip to Switzerland. They met again in Nairobi in 2025 for an intensive Maker Labresidency during the Kilele Summit, further consolidating their long‑term collaboration. In 2025, they received support for their Co-creation project.

Hallucinations of an Artifact – Jonathan O’Hear (Switzerland) and Mandeep Singh Raikhy (India)

Hallucinations of an Artifactbrings dance, light and artificial intelligence together to engage with the contested history of the Dancing Girl of Mohenjo‑Daro, a 5,000‑year‑old statuette repeatedly re‑appropriated by contemporary politics. Developed through a long‑standing artistic relationship, the project uses performance to question ideas of cultural ownership, national identity and historical narrative. In this exchange, co‑creation unfolds through intense dialogue, trust and the willingness to allow strong, independent artistic propositions to coexist and transform one another within a shared process.

Jonathan O’HearandMandeep Singh Raikhyfirst met in 2010, when Jonathan was invited to be lightning mentor in a residency space. They subsequently began collaborating on independent creative projects. In 2023, they received a Co-creation grant for their projectHallucination of an artifact.

HeveaHub – Alexander Amir Khan (Switzerland) and Katia Fagundes (Brazil)

HeveaHubis a co‑creation and material research project based between the Brazilian Amazon and Basel. Working from the territory and together with local communities, the project explores natural latex as a material, a cultural practice and a point of connection between artistic, scientific and ecological knowledge. Embedded in daily life and long‑term presence, the collaboration prioritises horizontal exchange and lived practice over extractive models of research. Climate, natural cycles and local knowledge shape both process and outcome, linking contexts in Brazil and Switzerland through shared experimentation.

In 2023, Swiss visual artist and designerAlex Amir Khanparticipated in Pro Helvetia’s artists-in-residency programme continuing his research on rubber and its traditional techniques in the Brazilian Amazon. During this period, he connected with Brazilian artist and designer Katia Fagundes (an artisan from Da Tribu design), with whom he developed the co-creationHeveaHub. The duo is mainly working on Katia’s property in Cotijuba Island in Belém, Pará, where they can research, create new artworks, and promote community outreach.

Furthermore, theHeveaHubproject has led to a strand in Mexico — where Alex has also researched latex during a residency in 2022. Anexhibition at the Museo Textil de Oaxaca, based on this current investigation, presented dialogues between traditional rainwear, historical rubber practices, and contemporary latex-based applications.

• Read Alex’s interview in the 2023 edition of our Guide to Residencies in South America

Wen Keng We Meet? – On Connection – Stirnimann-Stojanovic (Switzerland) and Keng Chen (China)

Wen Keng We Meet? – On Connectionis an audiovisual performance by the RRRRRR Collective (Keng Chen,Wen-Chi Liu, Dino Radoncic,Eneas Prawdzic,Nathalie Stirnimann and Stefan Stojanovic) – based across Asia and Switzerland – situated between documentary theatre and a fictional search into the human need for encounter. In May 2024, three members travelled to Xiamen and Kinmen to attempt to connect by sight across the Taiwan Strait – just 6 km apart – while the others followed from Zurich through digital eyes. This performative action, at once simple and complex, became the core of a work reflecting on distance, visibility and a fragmented yet connected world. The Co‑creation grant enabled all six members to come together in Zurich — deepening a practice built on listening, negotiation and shared authorship — before the piece was premiered in the frame ofOpen Studioby Studio DdP

Dimitri de Perrotat Gessnerallee in Zurich in January 2026.

Collaboration rarely begins with a clearly defined outcome. More often, it grows out of earlier encounters, friendships or shared research interests. First meetings at residencies, long-term online exchanges or repeated informal collaborations lay the groundwork, which the support measure Co-creation allows artists to deepen over time.

In the dance project,SEESAW, Jasmine Morand explains in an article in Le Courrier (August 2025) that co‑creation begins by ‘stepping out of your own daily life to slip into someone else’s’, describing immersion in another artistic and political context as a prerequisite for shared work.

Similarly, in the design research projectHeveaHub, Alex Amir Khan notes that although latex initially brought the collaborators together, their work continues because of a shared way of thinking and working, developed over time and across places.

In the music projectTuning, digital instruments and post‑traditional music in Africa and Europe, long‑term exchange eventually led the artists to move from research to practice. After years of experimentation, they concluded that ‘there was only one thing left to do’: realise their work through performances, an album, and the open sharing of tools, turning collaboration into a concrete, collective outcome.

Equitable collaboration emerges not as a fixed model but as a practice shaped by context, time and relationships. In the design research projectHeveaHub, Alex Amir Khan frames equity as a way of working rather than a principle, explaining that it lies in ‘living, sharing space, making decisions together’, allowing processes to become more horizontal and knowledge to be exchanged rather than extracted. ‘It’s also where theory becomes real — because it’s lived, not just discussed. This creates a space where different perspectives meet and shape the work.’

Similarly, inHallucinations of an Artifact, Jonathan O’Hear reflects that long‑term collaboration rests on ongoing conversation and mutual respect, noting that what ultimately matters is less where ideas originate than where they lead collectively.

In the music projectTuning, digital instruments and post‑traditional music in Africa and Europe, Basile Huguenin‑Virchaux emphasises honest dialogue and complementarity as the basis for an equitable partnership, describing collaboration as an explicitly horizontal relationship, free from power dynamics.

InSEESAW, Jasmine Morand highlights the role of mutual respect and shared curiosity, observing that common ground often reveals itself gradually as collaboration unfolds.

‘For us, equitable collaboration begins with deciding together.How we work. How we share tasks. How we take on roles.And knowing that these roles can shift.

We understand equity as a kind of symmetry.But not a fixed state.Something we have not arrived at, but continue to practice.

It lies in the willingness to listen.To every voice. Every feeling. Every boundary. Every need.Nothing is too small to matter.

Decisions are made together.Openly. Transparently.Through consensus, which also requires time.

It also means staying attentive.To each other’s strengths.Making space for different ways of contributing.Learning to understand different realities.And sometimes, waiting. Adjusting. Reconfiguring.

Equity is not always about balance.For us, it is about staying. Responding.And continuing to speak to one another. As a transcultural and transdisciplinary collective,equity is not something we are.It is something we practice.’

Wen Keng We Meet? – On Connection

How collaboration shapes artistic practice

Co‑creation also challenges conventional notions of authorship, control and fixed outcomes. Whether in a long‑term partnership or a collective, the artistic work emerges from negotiation and mutual influence. Strong individual propositions are not dissolved in collaboration, but brought into a shared space where they can coexist, clash and transform.

In the performing arts projectHallucinations of an Artifact, Jonathan O’Hear reflects that friction is not a setback but a productive and pleasant moment. Difficult phases, when ‘things have to fit’, often generate the most meaningful discussions, allowing something new to emerge from what is not yet working.

Or how the partners of the projectWen Keng We Meet? – On Connectiondescribe it:

The challenges have been there from the beginning.They are structural.

Six people. Different cultural backgrounds. Different languages.Living in different places. Unequal access to resources.And a reliance on digital communication that does not always hold.

Sometimes, just sustaining the collaboration is already the challenge.

Coming back together after seven years brought another layer.Who had we each become?We had grown, separately. As artists. As people.

To meet again, almost every day for two months, was intense.At times, disorienting.When we felt lost, we leaned on trust.In each other. In the process.

And slowly, we realized that these difficulties are not outside the work.They are the work.

Distance. Friction. The effort to stay connected.Not problems to solve, but material to stay with.

Cultural differences did not need to be resolved.They opened multiple ways of seeing.And in that, new meaning appeared.

Our way of working has made things slower.But also more grounded.More relational. More attentive to one another.In the end, perhaps the artistic ge