Nägeli-Nagel

Station theatre · Theater REAKTIV · Spinnerei Schönau, Wetzikon · September 2023

A dancer in a white work coat at an open factory door filled with yellow smoke; a viola player with a laptop and pedals plays beside her — Valea Völcker and Diego Kohn in *Der letzte Tag der Fabrik*, Spinnerei Schönau, September 2023

The last day of the factory

In 2023 Wetzikon celebrated two anniversaries: the 250th birthday of the music educator Hans Georg Nägeli and the 200th birthday of the Spinnerei Schönau, the cotton mill founded by Frédéric Nagel. Theater REAKTIV turned the occasion into Nägeli-Nagel, a theatre walk through the rooms and grounds of the old mill. The audience moved in small groups from station to station, through music, dance, installation and theatre, from industrialisation to the present.

Together with the dancer and actor Valea Völcker I created one of these stations: Der letzte Tag der Fabrik (The last day of the factory), performed on the mill’s old loading ramp. The factory has gone bankrupt. Two workers, a dancer and a musician, live through its last day, in the meeting of bodies and machines that shaped the industrial age.

I composed the music and performed it live on viola and electronics. The electronic part, developed in co-creation with the composer Pablo Bas from Buenos Aires, is built entirely from my field recordings of textile machines at the Museum Neuthal Textil- & Industriekultur, a former spinning mill: machines from the early nineteenth century to the present, and the water that once drove them. The piece unfolds as a dialogue between the acoustic instrument and the sounds of the factory, together with fragments of music by Hans Georg Nägeli.

Project: Nägeli-Nagel by Theater REAKTIV
Artistic direction: Camilla Gomes dos Santos, Matthias Werder
Station: Der letzte Tag der Fabrik, on the loading ramp
Dance, acting: Valea Völcker
Music: Diego Kohn, composition, viola and electronics; electronics in co-creation with Pablo Bas
Performances: 2, 3, 9 and 10 September 2023
Occasion: 250 years Hans Georg Nägeli · 200 years Spinnerei Schönau

On the ramp

Balancing on a spool while the music plays

Viola, electronics and the sounds of the machines

The loading ramp of the Spinnerei Schönau at dusk

Recording the machines

On 13 August 2023 I spent a day at the Museum Neuthal Textil- & Industriekultur in Bäretswil, a former spinning mill a few kilometres from Wetzikon. With a field recorder I went from machine to machine: carding and spinning machines, early looms by J. J. Rieter, weaving machines by Sulzer Rüti, and the water channel outside the building. These recordings became the entire sound material of the electronic part, shaped together with Pablo Bas in Buenos Aires.

A score from the history of the mill

The composition follows the history of the Schönau as a timeline: the stones of the castle tower used to build the mill in 1823, the dam and water power, the bankruptcy of 1842, modernisation and the boiler house with its chimney, the fire of 1900, electric motors and the turbine house, the Second World War, a second fire and the final closure in 1991. The machines change with the epochs: mechanical, steam, steam and electric, modern electric.

Hand-drawn sketch of the composition: a timeline with layers of wavy and straight lines for mechanical, steam and electric machines, and numbered sections such as construction, water, bankruptcy, fire and the Second World War — Sketch of the composition, with sections for the stages of the mill’s history (notes in Spanish)

Credits

Production: Theater REAKTIV, curated by Kultur Wetzikon
Station: Valea Völcker, Diego Kohn
Music: Diego Kohn; electronics in co-creation with Pablo Bas
Field recordings: Museum Neuthal Textil- & Industriekultur, Bäretswil
Photos: Performance: Matthias Werder · Field recordings: Selma Wick

A video of the performance will be added soon.