BOOM – Relikte einer Industriegesellschaft

Cyrill Appert, Eveline Schumacher, Mario Trachsel

Economics & Labour Graduation 2021 History & Heritage Technology
Daria Ruettimann
07.06.21

In Rheinsulz, near Laufenburg am Oberrhein, Cyrill Appert, Eveline Schumacher and Mario Trachsel come across an industrial area between the railway line and the banks of the Rhine. On the site of today’s Astra Tech AG, five medium-sized companies have each experienced economic upswings, downturns and new beginnings since 1960.

What remains are the traces of the rise and fall of the companies operating here. These include the production facilities and locksmith’s shop still in operation today, along with the disused repair shop; scrap iron such as railway tracks and conveyor belts from the former second-hand trade in tunnel and gallery construction equipment; around 7000 black-and-white and colour photos, as prints, negatives, slides and on digital storage devices; plans of plants and machinery; hundreds of business documents – and a mountain of debts.

This collaborative project takes on the experiment of being guilelessly fascinated by such founds and stories, which seem to have fallen out of time – contemporary witnesses that invite the construction of different readings of the past.