Juerg is interested in the interfaces between innovative storytelling, creative documentary films, expanded cinema, and large-scale art projects. He embraces the challenges of digitalization and explores the narrative forms made possible by virtual and augmented reality, 360° video, and webdoc.

Juerg is a member of the Verband Filmregie und Drehbuch Schweiz (Swiss Filmmakers Association). His films receive support from the Swiss Federal Office of Culture, Swiss Radio and Television (SRF), the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (SRG SSR), Berner Filmförderung, and private individuals and foundations.

As early as 1986, Juerg used his documentary My Mother is in Sri Lanka, which he co-directed with Remo Legnazzi, to provide a counterpoint to the Swiss media’s very one-sided reporting on the reasons why Tamils were fleeing Sri Lanka. And with The Power of Healing, he made a film about healers working in a legal grey area in rural Emmental.

Rather than being mere snapshots, Juerg’s films are imbued with a sense of permanence. This is especially evident in the Rasheda trilogy. In Rasheda – No Time for a Chat, we see how microloans help Rasheda and her family take their first steps out of extreme poverty and servitude in 1993. Ten years later, The Rasheda Trust shows Rasheda and her family facing up to the challenges created by bank debts, failed harvests, their two sons’ truancy, and the threat of being shut out of the village community. The third in the trilogy, Powerhouse, is planned for winter 2021, which will mark 25 years since the first movie.

Another pioneering film is Encounters on the Milky Way, which Juerg shot in West Africa and Switzerland. Juerg showed it at the pan-African film festival, Fespaco, in Ouagadougou. He then toured with the film through the Sahel and held open-air screenings to bring the movie back to the places where he had filmed it. This journey is documented extensively in Juerg’s TV movie Les Amis d’Amadou, and in the radio feature Q in Burkina, which Eric Facon made for Swiss Radio.

Before Juerg began focusing on feature-length documentaries in the 1980s, he and the team from Container TV were very much involved in the political movements of the time. They would go out filming with the Sony Portapak, the first affordable portable video recording device to come on the market. The battery-powered technology allowed the group to move around and document their own stories and those of their fellow activists, and then quickly share the footage with groups in other cities in Switzerland and abroad. The aim was to create a Gegenöffentlichkeit (counterpublic) through grassroots reporting as the antithesis of mainstream press, radio, and television reporting.

Juerg always forges authentic relationships with the people who feature in his films. This is true whether he is exploring the world of traditional opera in modern-day China, microloans in the hands of a small-scale businesswoman in Bangladesh, the daily lives of people living with functional illiteracy, the realities of life with a mental illness in a high-performance country, or the sharing of experiences between dairy farmers from the Sahel and Switzerland. Juerg’s ability to connect with his protagonists is especially striking in the film Sooner or Later, which focuses on terminally ill people who know that they will die during filming and will never see the finished movie.

Juerg is open to projects with universities, governmental and non-governmental organizations, and businesses. His goal is to initiate new and pioneering developments in collaboration with his partners. Having spent many years working in a transcultural context, Juerg is as familiar with startups and the maker scene as he is with universities and the film and media world. He accepts commissions to develop and produce film and media programs, contributes to training curricula for tertiary education, and creates customized exhibition formats. He also advises initiatives and links them up to create multipolar platforms. His network includes people of different ages from Africa, Asia, the US, and Europe. Some represent well-known companies and institutions; others are independent, up-and-coming talents.

As early as 1981, the Swiss curator Michel Ritter invited Juerg to bring his ColorTV installation to Fribourg for the first Fri-Art exhibition. At the time, Juerg was drawing inspiration from Swiss pioneers such as René Bauermeister, and Chérif and Silvie Defraoui. A New York studio grant then gave Juerg direct access to the work of artists such as Vito Acconci, Steina and Woody Vasulka, Nam June Paik, Jonas Mekas, Alexander Hahn, and Bill Viola.

Juerg was part of the group that founded the Vereinigung Unabhängiges Video Schweiz (Swiss Association of Independent Video), and in 1984 he was closely involved in compiling the first comprehensive collection of contemporary Swiss video art. He experimented with live music, performance, and video in collaboration with musicians David Gattiker, Rick Iannacone, and Michael Little, artist Res Ingold, and cinematographer Peter Guyer. During this time, he also created video works with Carlo E. Lischetti (On the Mountain), Boris Nieslony (Kleine Insuffizienzen), and Roman Signer (Aktionen Bern), to name just a few.

In the early 2000s, Juerg created ZONES, a four-channel interactive percent-for-art piece for the lobby of the headquarters of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation. He followed this with another interactive piece, for which he collaborated with the artist George J. Steinmann.

Juerg has been involved in academic work for many years. Between 1979 and 1981, he co-created Z’Programm säuber mache (Make Your Own TV Show), a community-action research project that investigated the effects of extensive media consumption among school children in Bern’s Tscharnergut neighborhood.

Further early academic achievements include setting up the audiovisual department at the Schule für Gestaltung Bern in the 1980s. He later became the founding director of the MediaLab at Bern University of the Arts, and taught audiovisual design and film at the university’s Division of Design and Fine Arts from 1999 to 2016. Juerg also spent the period from 2009 to 2012 designing and leading a research project entitled Cultural Dialogue by Teleconferencing. The project was a collaboration with Barbara Bader, who is currently head of the Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design. It was funded by the Sino Swiss Science and Technology Cooperation, swissnex China, Bern University of the Arts, and Tongji University.

As Bern University of the Arts’ representative in China, Juerg was responsible for the Memorandum of Understanding with Tongji University. His relationship with Tongji University has also included serving on the advisory board to the dean of the College of Design and Innovation, working as a visiting professor from 2009 to 2015, and running a master’s studio for innovative storytelling. He also founded the Y Institute Tongji/BUA, a center for transdisciplinary studies. As the center’s director, he hosted the first transdisciplinary Y Think Tank, which was entitled New Materiality & Beyond.

His clients include the International Committee of the Red Cross (Wound Ballistics); the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (Rasheda – No Time for a Chat); the Swiss Red Cross (Seeing Means Living); Pro Helvetia (Fri-Art NY Made in Switzerland); Swiss Federal Railways (Die Neubaustrecke Mattstetten (Bern) – Rothrist (Olten)); the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health in collaboration with AIDS Info Doku (Confrontation HIV/AIDS, six episodes); Swiss Radio and Television (The World In-between, Living with Orangutans); H+ Swiss Hospitals (pioneering hospital initiatives); Bern Cantonal Department of Education (Imprisonment); Museum der Kulturen Basel (Bao, the Upright Judge); and the Swiss Federal Office for Buildings and Logistics (The Swiss Parliament Building).

Television Productions and Short Documentaries

• Seitenblick (Side Glance), experimental (in production)
• Die Angst hat 1000 Augen (The Fear that has a Thousand Eyes), producer (2011)
• Boggsen (Boggsing) (2011)
• Der rechtschaffene Richter Bao (Bao, the Upright Judge) (2011)
• Kuppel über Bern (The Swiss Parliament Building) (2006–09)
• Unter Orang-Utans (Living with Orangutans) (2008)
• Wound Ballistic (2008)
• Zwischenwelt (The World In-between) (2007)
• The Rasheda Trust (2006)
• Les Amis d’Amadou (Amadou’s Friends) (2004)
• Freiheitsentzug (Imprisonment) (1996–1997)
• Hey you! (1998)
• Das Versprechen (The Promise) (1996)
• Simulationszauber (The Magic of Simulation) (1995–96)
• Rasheda – keine Zeit für einen Schwatz (Rasheda – No Time for a Chat) (1993–1994)
• Konfrontation HIV/AIDS (Confrontation HIV/AIDS), six episodes (1991–1993)
• Sehen ist alles (Seeing Means Living) (1991)
• Kleine Insuffizienzen (Little insufficiencies) with Boris Nieslony (1990)
• Fri-Art NY Made in Switzerland, documentary of the exhibition and performances, co-directed with Peter Guyer (1984)
• Roman Signer – Aktionen Oktober 1983 bis Juni 1984
• Auf dem Berg (On the mountain) with Carlo E. Lischetti (1983)
• So Bern – Jugend auf der Strasse (So Bern – Youth on the Street), with Alex Sutter et al. (1980)
• Video5 (1978)
• Raum zum Leben – Häuserbesetzung Spitz (Space to Live – Occupation of Houses), fragment (1975)

Installations and Art Projects

• Remnants – Reflections of the inevitable, Episode 1
• Stratagem, Xmedia installation (in production)
• ZONES, interactive four-channel video installation, percent-for-art, Bern (1999–2012)
• Schein (Shine), interactive video installation, Bienzgut, Bern (1998)
• The Presidents, Fri-Art Made in Switzerland, NY, video installation, Franklin Furnace, and performances with Peter Guyer, Res Ingold, Michael Lytle, Chris Cochrane, and others (1984)
• Eiger, by Peter Guyer, David Gattiker and Jürg Neuenschwander (1982)
• ColorTV, Fri-Art Fribourg, installation, curated by Michel Ritter (1981)
• Passagen (Passages), multimedia installation, Helmhaus Zürich (1980)