The Soaking Space is a concept by Stefanie Knobel for the former cotton spinning mill, and later cotton weaving mill, of Adolf Guyer-Zeller in Neuthal in the Zurich Oberland, today the Neuthal Museum of Textile and Industrial Culture. The Soaking Space is marked by large, white cotton fabrics coated with transparent silicone, which have been installed in the factory building.

“To soak” is a softening process that occurs by adding water or liquid. Water causes a change in consistency. In The Soaking Space, the liquid substance penetrates forgotten areas and places them in a fluid connection to the present. What happens when the factory building and its stories are soaked?

The Soaking Space is a concept of an ongoing, open examination of the textile history of the Zurich Oberland, which is connected to colonial entanglements with India and to the artist's own autobiography.

The artist still remembers when her father, who was born in Bauma, took her to the grave of Adolf Guyer Zeller, which is located in the Bauma cemetery not far from the cotton mill. Adolf-Guyer Zeller joined his father's cotton mill in Neuthal in 1863. In 1866 he became a partner and in 1874 the sole owner of the factory, which he continuously expanded. He also tried his hand as a cotton speculator and expressed his views on geopolitical issues with great self-confidence. He recommended spheres of influence to the European colonial powers and outlined strategic railroad lines from Europe to Africa and India. His diaries show that although Guyer-Zeller struggled with his own assessment of slavery, he ultimately justified it in historical, theological, racial-theoretical and, above all, economic terms and also trivialized it. He regarded the social hierarchies between patrons and workers and between plantation owners and enslaved people as natural and unchangeable.¹

As part of the Kunstlokal Festival, Stefanie Knobel invited artists Olivia Abächerli, Sally Schonfeldt, Olivia Wiederkehr, Riikka Tauriainen, and Kay Zhang as well as the director of the Neuthal Museum of Industrial Culture Nora Baur and her father Walter Knobel to The Soaking Space on October 2, 2022, to talk about the history of the textile factory as well as the water around the factory.