The Zuger Kirschtorte (Zug cherry cake)

Zuger Kirschtorte is an essayistic video work that uses the Zuger Kirschtorte Zug’s iconic, sponge-based cherry cake as a lens through which to examine one of the world’s most concentrated accumulations of wealth, corporate power, and financial innovation. The narrator moves through an ordinary day in Zug: visiting supermarkets, tasting local products, drinking matcha in an independent café. These mundane gestures unfold against a backdrop of extraordinary economic density. The work draws a demographic and economic contrast between Zug and Tehran two cities the narrator knows intimately to make legible what is otherwise invisible: the sheer scale of capital concentrated in a Swiss city of 32,000 people. Through this comparison, Zug’s familiar streets become estranging. The video traces the city’s history as a hub of commodity trading (shaped in part by the figure of Marc Rich), its current identity as “Crypto Valley,” and the quiet presence of oligarchic and dynastic wealth that circulates through it. In between, the protagonist sells a slice of cake for 0.005 TCC, converts it to Swiss Francs, and invests in Glencore shares.