LET ALL THE CRAFTSMEN OF THIS BOOK BE THANKED: The (In)visible Narratives of the Grande Dixence Dam
LET ALL THE CRAFTSMEN OF THIS BOOK BE THANKED:
The (In)visible Narratives of the Grande Dixence Dam
The invention of hydroelectricity by Aristide Bergès in 1869 marked a turning point for industries across Europe, motivated by an engineeringdiscourse. In Switzerland, traditional watermill techniques were already in used in watchmaking and paper mills, and Alpine valleys inhabitants had built water supply networks linking villages and settlements.
From the twentieth century onwards, Alpine landscapes were transformed into an electricity-producing territory, with concrete walls fed by large artificial lakes, production plants, cable car lines, and transfer lines. This colonisation of the Alpine arc was driven by fascination with the “Houille Blanche” (White Coal) that helped build financial markets with support fromprivate and institutional investors. The construction of the Grande Dixence dam became the most promising, largest and most efficient, contributing both to stabilising the Swiss post-war economy and elevating the country’s global reputation hydroelectric the design and construction.
This marked the beginning of large-scale media coverage of the project. Documentaries, photographs and other archives focused on machinery, at the expense of workers on the construction sites, who were absent in these early representations of the project. Those involved in early stages of the construction of the water adduction system, particularly foreign workers, were invisible. This invisibility sustained the seasonal worker system in the Swiss economy and its replication elsewhere without major criticism.
In this Énoncé théorique, we question the sensationalism of such radical technological built projects, the production of imaginaries, and their “extractivist gaze”. Starting from political and economic context that enable the promotion of discourses related to hydroelectricity, we use comparative study of the representations that reinforced narratives of abstraction at different scales. Finally, we discuss counterforces that highlighted the problematic colonisation process of the Alps through protests, emerging syndicates, and publications. Touching upon temporality, housing, labour, machinery, landscape and the dam, we propose an alternative reading of archives that gives visibility to overlooked entities and processes.