Gentrification is often used as a positive term to describe a process of renovating deteriorated neighborhoods by means of the influx of more affluent residents. However, as prices rise it often leads to displacement of the original inhabitants. During the process comes also the eradications of the complexity of old cultures, customs and aesthetics that are created by socially and economically diverse communities.

Jani Leinonen has created a gentrified village of St. Moritz from ten traditional Swiss cuckoo clocks that large international corporations have taken over. The forms of ancient Swiss architecture can still be seen under the freshly painted surfaces, advertisements and signs of the corporations. In Leinonen’s installation different worlds collide: old and new, progress and tradition, future and past, development and destruction. The installation is about time and its effects on a small village in the Engadin – or anywhere in the world.