From the second half of the 18th century until the time of the First World War, the Zurich Oberland was an important location for the industrial processing of cotton and the production of cotton fabrics. When the demand for mousseline cloths, calico cloths, and India nets rose sharply in the second half of the 18th century, cotton production in the Zurich Oberland expanded to an unprecedented extent. The factories processed the raw material, which primarily came from India, colonized by Great Britain, and arrived in Europe by sea, into textiles. The cotton manufacturers sold the manufactured fabrics profitably on the local and international market – sometimes back to the exploited colonies themselves.

The Schönau spinning mill in Wetzikon was one of the factories that processed cotton on a large scale in the Zurich Oberland. Like the surrounding factories, it had developed from the displacement of manual spinning on the spinning wheel and weaving on the loom. This work, traditionally carried out as homework across generations in their own private rooms, experienced significant growth during the 18th century and became the sole source of income for the landless poor population. Towards the end of the 18th century, at least half of the population of the municipalities of Uster, Mönchaltdorf, Egg, Oetwil, Grünigen, Gossau, Wetzikon, and Seegräben were employed in the cotton trade. The industrialization of cotton production rapidly changed this work and thus the social conditions, and led to local uprisings.



Schönau celebrated its 200th anniversary in 2023. The anniversary provided an opportunity to take a critical and multi-perspective look at the history of the former factory site in the context of Zurich’s cotton history, highlighting its integration into global contexts. A heavy, heavy duty – where the cotton lies entered into a dialogue with the former cotton warehouse on the factory site. The freestanding building, which is soon to be converted, was formerly used to store unprocessed cotton until the factory was shut down. The orientation of the building towards the street, its façade, and the design of the space bear witness to its original function. With these traces and reminiscences, A heavy, heavy duty – where the cotton lies entered into a secretly eerie connection: The persona of cotton evoked in the work activates the stories inscribed in the building, and refers to what is absent today: the vast amount of cotton that once awaited processing here, but also highlights the continued need to examine the exploitation of socially and economically marginalized classes in both pre-industrial homework and under the strict regime of factory work, as well as Switzerland's entanglements in colonialism.




The installation is an attempt to make existing relationships between the Zurich Oberland, India, Iran, and Indonesia negotiable and to evoke new, speculative relationships. With the help of associations, transitions, breaks and mergers, the work prepares a narrative that establishes cotton as a representative of economic, ecological, and social change processes. A booklet brings together historical references, research, interviews, diary entries, and notes: from the cotton producing lamb of Tartary (originating in Northern Iran), from agricultural workers in Nagpur, and weavers in Shantipur and Lodikheda, India, from a textile producer and trader with business connections to Switzerland in Jakarta, Indonesia, from disused textile factories in the Zurich Oberland, from the violent history of homework, and from the first industrial spinning machine “Spinning Jenny”. Strands of global cotton production interweave with the omnipresence of synthetic materials and chemical substances. A science fiction landscape emerges in which fertilizers, cold ice, and hormone preparations produce, optimize, kill, or preserve bodies - or can be incorporated as a means of resistance. Between the cotton warehouse with its many stories and the meandering narrative voice of A heavy heavy duty – where the cotton lies intimacy is found, yet also resistance and the unexpected. The future timeline laid out in the work, which allows the past to resonate with the present, opens up a reminiscent actualization of Switzerland's colonial entanglements within the framework of an extensive textile history.



The cotton warehouse is dilapidated and will be partially demolished and renovated in fall 2024. The partial demolition of the building was the occasion and starting point for a conversation with people from Wetzikon about cotton history(ies) and the potential of fiction and fabulation: Which stories are broken off and initiated with the demolition and how do they continue? What is deposited and modulates the present and future? What possibilities arise from (further) spinning these stories, pulling threads from the past into the present and future?
The conversation took place on November 17, 2024, at Garage Wetzikon with guests Barbara Faissler (photographer), Maria Gallelli and Lucia Passaseo (former textile workers at Streiff AG), Stefanie Knobel (artist). The discussion was moderated by Carole Bruderer-Blanchard. Information was provided by Irene Tobler (Head of the Local History Archive, Wetzikon).



The booklet and a 12-piece postcard set accompanying the work are available to order.

The text of the work appears in the publication Writing the body with the body – Essays, Texts and Performances (Volume B) by Stefanie Knobel.