The „Garden of Violence“ was part of the Swiss national exhibition Expo.02 in Murten. It refrained from featuring a content-addressed portrayal of violence by playing it down and employing symbols, interspersing the idyll with disturbing aspects and demonstrating the impossibility of banishing all unpleasant aspects. In the Mediterranean garden, the core of the complex, old gnarled olive and fruit trees evoked familiar emotions among the vegetables and scented herbs, at the same time making an alien impression in this setting. The rest of the garden also exhibited subtle provocations and crass contradictions in the – at first glance – idyllic surroundings. Exotic tree ferns were mixed with indigenous ground ferns. The Mediterranean and Nordic groves stood face to face, and the existing terraced landscape was accentuated by black rubber conveyor belts that disguised the vertical areas between the different levels and represented an aspect of resistance to the geometry of the artificially imposed order.

Kienast Vogt Project