Swiss Psychotropic Gold

For more than three centuries, Swiss commodity trade has been caught up in colonial, postcolonial and neoliberal entanglements. Having fueled early modern industrialization, as well as contemporary finance, Swiss trading activities have influenced cultural, affective and moral economies. They have contributed to Swiss wealth, but also to national narratives of independence, safety and white supremacy. Yet, public debate on colonial involvement is almost absent. The Swiss mythology of neutrality transforms the often violent and 'dirty'material complexities of mining and trading into an opaque and orderly form of technocracy, discretion and virtual finance.

An artistic and ethnographic project, "Swiss Psychotropic Gold" re-narrates global gold trade—from mining in former colonies to its refining and many diversions in and out of Switzerland — as a series of transformative immediations of primary materials, values and affects.

Supplementary material in the printed book edition: The attached SD memory card contains artistic contributions as video and audio files.