“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom”, wrote the great Greek philosopher Aristotle echoing the sentiment of many other ancient thinkers whose enlightenment resonates with us to this day, thousands of years later. After all, introspection is a powerful tool. It encourages us to shed the fatty layers conditioning and cushioning our reality, and it destroys the thick walls we build in our infancy to cope with the world and eventually become optimistic adults. 

When it comes to art, there’s nothing mightier than an artist whose practice is built upon the darkest, deepest secrets buried within their soul, beyond their superficial knowledge, and invisible to the eye. The heart-shattering truths emerging from these inward journeys have the power to spark curiosity and provide the drive needed to create emotionally charged pieces capable of moving thousands of people. In the case of Swiss-Chilean visual artist Laura Gauch, the need for answers was so intense that it inspired The Ocean Is Closed on Mondays, an autobiographical experimental film—her first of this kind—exploring the topic of assimilation within immigrant communities.

Born and raised in Fribourg, Switzerland, Laura spent her summer breaks at her grandmother’s house in New Jersey, devouring delicious homemade empanadas and soaking up American culture with pride. The Spanish filler words used by her family to intersperse and exalt dialogue seemed like a common thing to do in such a multicultural country—her unaware, juvenile mind did not have the tools to read between the lines. At home, she’d speak German and English, the former her father’s mother tongue, the latter her mother’s. It had never occurred to her that she could be anything other than Swiss-American. 

Up to her teens, Laura had known her maternal family as native East Coasters, model US citizens celebrating the Fourth of July and stuffing turkey on Thanksgiving. Nothing hinted at a muddy immigration status; her relatives spoke perfect English, they ate Mac’n’Cheese and they were fully embedded into Yankee culture. Until one day—when she was around ten—her mother suddenly died and the world as she knew it came crumbling down. Everything she knew about her mom and her ancestry was an illusion: Laura’s maternal family had immigrated to the US from Chile in the late '60s because of the difficult political and economic situation of the country. After their forced relocation, a military coup would sweep the country upside down.

From then on, Laura launched on a quest to discover her roots, learn Spanish, and understand the reasons behind this brutal façade that had shielded her from reality for so long.

Eventually, she picked up a camera and began documenting the surrounding world, focusing heavily on her hidden past as a source of inspiration. Very quickly, film became an investigative tool to record the feelings that drove her family to blend in—such as in Raíces, her debut documentary project—and photography acted as a magnifying glass helping her read through the fine print. 

Graduated from Lucerne University of Art and Design with a Bachelor’s Degree in Camera Arts in 2021, Laura started sketching out the concept for The Ocean Is Closed on Mondays many months before finalizing the treatment.

In the beginning, the idea was “quite different”, she told me over a healthy lunch—pozole for me, green bowl for her—at the Downtown Manhattan, millennial-core restaurant Dimes, a few days after wrapping up the production.

“I was very inspired by my mom, who was from Chile but grew up in New York…as well as my family who has always lived in New Jersey”, she recounts. However, the more she delved into her family history, the more her attention shifted toward a more widespread ideology affecting immigrant communities at large—that of assimilation. Cultural assimilation is the process in which a minority group or culture comes to resemble a society’s major group or assimilate the values, behaviors, and beliefs of another group whether fully or partially, slowly stripping bare of the notions that make up their identity. It’s a survival tactic adopted by people immigrating to a new country in search of a better life, especially those choosing the USA as their host nation.
It’s a crude and melancholic process that detaches people from what’s left behind to ease the transition into a new world and, hopefully, prevent discrimination. Through assimilation, newcomers prepare the ground for acceptance and assume a reformed character made of non-assertive codes and correct pronunciation. It’s a huge sacrifice as what’s lost is rarely found again.

Leaning back on her seat, fork in hand, her gaze alternating between my face and the colorful dish in front of her, Laura tells me that the part of the process she was mostly drawn to is the sacrificing of the elements determining one’s individuality. Particularly, she wanted to find out how assimilation affects the next generation and obfuscates their sense of belonging. “I didn’t know anything about my family,” she states firmly, her cadence slightly molded by her trilingual background, her soft voice tensing up. I perceive a blend of frustration and nostalgia spewing from her mouth; the type of emotion that only the descendants of dispossessed people can feel. Yet, instead of being angry at those who came before her, Laura decided to channel her mysterious past into beautiful art that could resonate with others.

Early in her journey to reassemble the puzzle of her life, she knew that relying on her personal experience wasn’t enough to uncover the plethora of intricacies that come with letting go of cultural heritage. The only way to answer the profound dilemmas sparked by her self-discovery was to widen the range and involve others with similar stories. The Hispanic community of New York—a place so diverse yet so quintessentially American—would be her starting point.

After creating an open-source questionnaire asking people to share their own stories of assimilation, shipping it out to the ether, and finally being awarded some grant money, Laura packed her bags and left Switzerland. On the other side of the Atlantic, an empty white cube studio located on the premises of NARS Foundation’s headquarters in Sunset Park was waiting for her. “It was a bit scary. It was my first artists’ residency and as a photographer, you often do not consider yourself an artist. I asked myself what I was doing there, amongst all these sculptures and people who make photo books, I never made a photo book!” she confesses candidly. But with time, she increasingly grew more comfortable with sitting in her assigned space, pen in hand, post-its stuck to the wall, running against time to finish the treatment. In the meantime, meeting gallerists and curators opened Laura’s eyes in front of the endless possibilities her medium afforded her. She could price and sell her pieces and screen her films in art institutions.

The urban setting of the residency turned out to be the cherry on top, the perfect location for her research and discovery too. “The fact that Sunset Park is so multicultural really inspired me and helped me expand my horizons,” she mentions as we delve deeper into the foundational part of the film.

Spooling through the submissions received on the survey, Laura pulled ten pages worth of powerful material which she then examined and dissected into common themes such as nostalgia, detachment, confusion, resilience, and rebirth.
These sentiments—mutual and familiar amongst migrant communities—were unraveled and poetized in collaboration with Puerto Rican writer Elizabet Velasquez, whose powerful lyrics became the backbone of The Ocean is Closed on Mondays. In regards to the scenes, Laura had a clear picture of what the accompanying visuals would look like from the beginning. Her mind was set on a sequence of tropes, disconnected from each other but very cohesive in the grand scheme of things, representing the various moods and feelings she extrapolated from her research. 

A novice in the field of experimental film, Laura was stressed about the outcome but kept her foot down on her choices. Relieved from the stress of shooting, she recounts how terrifying it was to handle such abstract production, “I am used to narrative or documentary as a genre, while the essence of this project and the meaning behind it were not immediate”.

With little to no budget, Laura bootstrapped a production crew and fished a diverse cast between old acquaintances and Backstage.com—a platform for emerging actors and people looking to gain on-screen experience. “Working with first-generation creatives was riveting. We shared parallel stories and woes. We became united by a passion for processing and translating internal struggle into artful images,” she says, with a special spark in her eye. 

But while the supporting team got along smoothly, the journey wasn’t always clear of bumps. The day before filming the final—and most important—scene, many of the sourced actors dropped out, leaving the crew to scramble for fall-backs. Moreover, the thick, stiff air caused by the Canadian wildfire crisis affecting the North Eastern region in late August of last year did not help the situation.

“I wanted this process to be a nice experience for everybody involved,” the young director explains, “especially given that everybody volunteered their time to help me. I didn’t want to go into the editing and think...Omg, I hated that day.”

Laura’s profound self-awareness and care for her team did pay off, as the final product oozes love and dedication. For five intense minutes, a crescendo of emotionally charged frames quickly rolls on the screen following the sumptuous rhythm of Velasquez’s striking words. Minute after minute, the film unravels a sequence of powerful metaphors, each coinciding with a day of the week, each day symbolizing something that’s been discarded to take on an amended, more orthodox self.

On the night of the film’s debut screening, the white-clad event space on the top floor of a Chinatown building, not too far from where we met for lunch a week prior, is packed with guests. The energy is bustling, people are chattering and presenting Laura with bouquets of fresh flowers. She’s wearing a long black dress complimenting her figure, her hair perfectly done and her soft facial features enhanced by the right amount of highlighter. It’s almost impossible to get through to her as fans—and friends—line up to greet and congratulate her. In the background, a cool DJ is mixing R’n’B classics with top-of-the-chart rap tracks, setting the tone for the night. 

At 8 o’clock sharp, the crowd is encouraged to take a seat; the lights turn off and silence falls deep. The show begins—and ends briskly. A well-deserved applause immediately roars from the audience. The Ocean Is Closed on Mondays may be less than 10 minutes long, but it delivers a powerful message of tenacity, prowess, and survival.