"Café des Vision" (performance), 2022 and "Star map" (image), 2022

The Café des Visions - a café-lounge that fits into a bicycle trailer - traveled through the Zürioberland this summer. Wherever it stopped, a mobile village square was set up for a short time. In Wetzikon, Pfäffikon, Uster and Rüti, café guests discussed the future of the community and the region: "What connects you to this place? What do you wish for its future?" At the end of this journey of discovery is the Kunstlokal Festival, where the artist will combine all the ideas collected to create a "star map of the Zürioberland". This map will be painted and is inspired by the needs and desires of the people who live there. (Shown at the Museum Neuthal Textile & Industrial Culture)

Anna Graber stages communication spaces for negotiation processes about the design of urban life and urban space. In collaboration with city administrations, cultural institutions, universities and festivals at home and abroad, she designs spaces in which futures are anticipated and tested. //// Shown at the Textile

"a smell rises" (walk-in black box, multimedia installation), 2022

"a smell rises" deals with the music automatons of the Klangmaschinen Museum. The period of origin of the music automatons is marked by the first Industrial Revolution. During this time, the focus was on a world view that granted a privileged class power over other people and technical achievements. Concepts such as productivity and mass consumption came to the fore. In her artistic practice, Celia Längle investigates socio-cultural entanglements and their encodings. The focus of this work is therefore a transformative level of encounter with the historical and social context of the collection. The installation is a reversal towards a contemplative and more emphatic encounter with the automata and a softening of the boundaries between machine and human. //// Shown at the Sound Machines Museum

Celia Längle is an artist with a transdisciplinary background. Her artistic process is above all a combinatorial process that extracts observations and constructs from their original frameworks, creates new juxtapositions, and thereby generates new references, meanings, and spaces of experience. It is a process of decoding and recoding, of transformation and deterritorialization.

"QUASIC CREATURE (to try and irritate)" (multimedia installation, stocking sculpture), 2022.

Based on the materials and the current exhibition at Museum Wetzikon, Kira van Eijsden realizes a growing installation that refers to the threads and stockings of the Idewe factory. Inspired by meter-long fishnet stockings, this work spins threads to the theories and ideas of Donna Haraway, centered around her notion of tentacular thinking. The world is to be perceived through touching, feeling, trying things out. Tentacles thereby stand for the other, the non-human, and raise the question: How can a perception that is not two-armed, two-eyed, and single-brained, but many-armed and many-brained, produce other forms of knowledge? Questions about perspectives arise-who tells what stories? What would be possible if? //// Shown at Museum Wetzikon

Kira van Eijsden explores feminist themes and self-empowerment, questioning the narratives and perspectives of the perpetual patriarchy and its excesses. In her work she uses the media of performance, installation, video, music, text and painting. True to the motto: mixed feelings, mixed media.

"Care Less" (willow branches, LED, on-site art), 2022 and "Map your Thoughts" (willow branches, plaster, and LED, on museum window), 2022.

Willow rods were traditionally used for basket weaving, although this craft is now somewhat forgotten. Their pliability when placed in water makes willow rods an ideal material for working. Leandra Agazzi used willow rods from the region to form the nest structure on the roof, "Care Less," and the painting, "Map your Thoughts," on view at the Museum am Pfäffikersee. A playful dialogue between organic and technical processes rubs shoulders in the works. The digital, linear view of the world, dictated by the grid, united with the sensual and ephemeral physicality of the chosen materials, forms the core of the works. It conveys the feeling of coming home - to nowhere. //// Shown at the Museum am Pfäffikersee

Leandra Agazzi combines craft techniques and natural materials that have their own "history". In her installation and sculptural works, she combines these materials with digital contemporary themes. Themes Agazzi works with include the complexities of technology, order, and the desire to animate the world and give it new life.

"From Lion To Tooth" (ceramics, embroidery, audio, flag, publication), 2022

The work From Lion To Tooth spins a fabled tale of cultural, botanical and historical encounters from the lion and the dandelion.Inspired by a sewing machine from the Museum's collection, a story emerges, dazzled by the sun, quivering from the roar of lions and thriving in our meadows. Many flowers, some more splendid and others more simple, have decorated sewing machines at different times in the history of sewing machines: from the rose to the lily, from the poppy to the water lily, to the gentian, edelweiss and daisies- not so the dandelion. The dandelion, ubiquitous in our meadows, with its plump yellow flower umbels, serrated leaves and long taproots, is not to be found on any sewing machine. Quite in contrast to its namesake, the lion, which adorned sewing machines in countless forms. In almost all European languages, the dandelion bears the lion in its name, but the two, lions and dandelions, have probably rarely met in the wild. //// Shown at the Sewing Machine Museum

Leonie Brandner is interested in materialities and textures of stories, how objects can contain stories, and how materials are incorporated into narrative experiences of moments. Her work is influenced by botany, feminist practices, stories passed from one generation to the next, and an ecological care we give to our environment.

"fossil_images" (video essay), 2022

Lourenço Soares presents a video essay in one of the more hidden rooms of the Dinosaur Museum and relates the work to the museum's Stegosaurus on display. In doing so, he takes a look at the relationships between the history of representations of dinosaurs and the different stages of capitalism. Against a gridded background reminiscent of sketches of paleontological sites, a series of texts describing these stages of capitalism are brought together with illustrations of specific models of dinosaur images. The artist considers the dinosaur as a speculative figure that often follows the evolution of political ideologies, particularly those associated with narratives of power, gender, the free market, obsolescence, and extinction. Overlaps occur between natural-cultural imaginaries-stories from the past that are also science fiction. //// More detailed work information: fossil_images (table i: primitive accumulation; table ii: industrial capitalism; table iii: man-the-hunter) //// Shown at Sauriermuseum Aathal

Lourenço Soares is a research-based artist working with knowledge ecologies. His work is inspired by speculative fiction and deconstruction, and focuses on the way Western knowledge represents nature.

"Idewe" (sculpture), 2022

M4 takes a sharpened, feminist look at the industrial history of Wetzikon. Quite unabashedly, they dig through the genesis of the visual identity of "Idewe". From 1843 to 2008, silk threads were dyed and twisted on the Idewe site. In 1902, Idewe was the first hosiery factory in Switzerland. Clichés (stamp prints) and advertising films of the company are the starting point of their artistic research, which recognizes graphic elements as contemporary witnesses and at the same time deconstructs and twists them in the here and now. In doing so, the students take a special look at the way the female body is staged. They carry their observations in public space and develop an oversized sculpture made of building materials and tarpaulins in the garden of Museum Wetzikon. //// Shown in the garden of Museum Wetzikon

M4, a musical half class of the KZO is a collective consisting of Caitlin, Noemi, Lynn, Cecilia, Emily, Janine, Sophie, Jasmin, Meret, Selina and Lara. Their teacher for visual arts, Miriam Strauss, accompanies their creative discoveries. The students, aged 14 to 17, come from the region and yet have very different backgrounds.

"Zurich Oberland (A Map)", 2022

Zürcher Oberland (A Map) presents a multi-layered map of the festival's geographical surroundings. With her unique visual language and use of a coded index, Olivia Abächerli invites the audience to explore the region's interwoven industrial history and landscape. She looks at the importance of the textile industry in the Zurich Oberland to Switzerland with some of the first factories in the country. Even today, there are traces and structures that bear witness to this period, such as rebuilt factory buildings, old cotton warehouses and water mills. The starting point for this work is the artist's research "Neutral Background", which undertook a graphic exploration of Switzerland's historical economic relations. This work specifically addresses the problematic relationships and power structures within the Swiss economy that shape the course of colonial and post-colonial relations. //// Distributed in partner museums

Olivia Abächerli researches multiperspectivities and exponentialities of political and historical narratives. By overlaying documentary material (e.g. video) with (often animated) drawings, she attempts to disentangle and transform complex contexts in order to make them legible on an affective level.

"9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0" (multimedia installation, hanging cloths from prison cell windows), 2022

End and beginning, death and rebirth, the old becomes new. Patricia Meier's intervention inside and outside the museum Eva Wipf deals with the phenomenon of the countdown. We countdown to the start of the new year, to the launch of a space rocket, to the beginning of a competition, or to the end of the world. It is a gesture of expectation and excitement, as we wait for what will happen next. One of Eva Wipf's tremolo altars serves as the inspiration for this work. The basso continuo is written in the order of a countdown (9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0) with the accompanying words that follow, "(...) SING IHM ENDLICH DAS NEUE LIED" The artist relates this countdown to Eva Wipf's preoccupation with death and rebirth. The longing for a change, for a new beginning. //// Shown at Museum Eva Wipf

Patricia Meier addresses the peculiarities of everyday life in her sound and video works. In her artistic work she searches for narration in the everyday and plays with its staging through artistic methods and contexts.

"Project F" (group exhibition), 2022

Project F is a participatory art project and an adaptive art installation that has set itself the task of developing a concept and a collaborative work process on the themes of collecting, identity and community in 100 days. Since the beginning of June 2022, a core group of actors including Andreas Thiele, Samira Jad, Carmen Sopi, Karin Borger, Loris Volkart, Carmen Guse, Christa Zuberbühler, Heidi Cechmann, Dante Simonitti, Roman Stenzel and Verena Dummermuth have come together to develop Project F Uster - make and share! The result of this collaboration will be presented during a 2-week action phase in the form of an exhibition on the first floor of the K2 Zeughausareal Uster. This exhibition is meant to be experienced and lived, and invites the visitors:inside to act, to manipulate the space and thus become part of the process themselves. At the center of Project F is the dialogue with the visitors, who contribute their experiences, perspectives and their relationship to Uster. //// Shown in the exhibition K2 at the Zeughausareal Uster

August 27 - September 10, K2 Zeughausareal Uster Action phase: extension of the installation, interaction and dialogue space Monday-Friday: 17-22 h & Saturday/Sunday: 10-22 h

"Xm2 Body in Space" (performance, mixed media), 2022

The Museum Neuthal has become the starting point for Ronja Römmelt's mixed media performance Xm2 Körper im Raum. The basis of the performative work is a mathematical formula with which the human body surface can be calculated as a two-dimensional area. Against the backdrop of the textile industrial culture in the Zurich Oberland, Römmelt operates with her own body as a measuring instrument and creates a vivid image for the m2 area that each of us occupies as a body in space. Römmelt invites visitors to discuss the responsibility for the m2 of surface we occupy as bodies in space and allows them to become part of her ongoing research. //// Shown at Museum Neuthal Textile & Industrial Culture

The artistic work of Ronja Römmelt encompasses a wide variety of media, which is expressed in performances, installations, participatory work series and video works. The driving force of her works lies in the multi-layered examination of the human body, our society and given norms of behavior.

"The soaking room" (site-specific installation, silicone on cotton), 2022

This work consists of large, white cotton fabrics coated with transparent silicone, which are installed in the former cotton mill Adolf Guyer-Zeller (now Museum Neuthal). Already in previous works, the artist attributes liveliness to cotton by speaking to it in active words. Through the historical influence that cotton exerted in the emergence of plantation, cottage industry, factory and the related network of colonial trade histories, the plant has acquired a power as a material and a means. The installation opens up a space for reflection, which for Knobel will simultaneously represent a re-start and a new beginning in her exploration of textile history in the Zurich Oberland. The Soaking Space Scores are choreographic sequences of actions that emerge from the "soaked space" in Museum Neuthal. They bring the body into lost and future relationships with the loom, cottage industry, water, and the landscape and its cultivation. //// More detailed information about the work: "The Soaked Room", installed in the former cotton spinning mill of Adolf Guyer-Zeller and later cotton weaving mill, today Museum Neuthal

Stefanie Knobel's transdisciplinary works follow a polyphonic breath that catches up with the technogenic substances in our alienated bodies and produces imaginings of the future that have yet to be woven. The textile and the tactile intersect, allowing the past to resonate in the present.

"Spinning" (two-day performance and participation project), 2022.

fljnc operates a mobile textile industry. Their label is called Spinnereien. The five-member women's collective spins new threads for a good future. They collect narrative fabrics from the population and process them in a two-day performative action, in which these fabrics and their stories become the guiding thread. Spinnerei 1 Textilmobil takes place in the city center of Uster. The collected pieces of fabric are sewn together in a performative process and their inherent stories are seamlessly threaded into a large ball of fabric. The next day, Spinnerei 2 Stoffwechsel promises a performative fabric exchange marathon in the coal magazine of Museum Neuthal. Here, the textile mobile fljnc will process the monster balls of fabric on spools and afterwards invites you to a Stofftwechsel brunch. You have to get involved with the metabolic processes. Maybe you'll end up flying home as a papillon. //// Shown at Zentrum Uster & Museum Neuthal Textil- & Industriekultur

Franziska Wüsten, Lena Estermann, Judith Spiess, Nicole Heri and Carolina Gut met at different times in different places under special circumstances - through friends and friends of friends. Each member of fljnc also pursues their own artistic practice, be it in the fields of theater, music, photography, video, visual arts, performance or even art education. Boundaries are fluid, common things are consciously strengthened, opposing or foreign things find new mixtures.