Swiss psychotropic gold

Up to 70% of gold which is traded worldwide passes through Swiss refineries. However, this happens largely unseen and unnoticed by a wider public. Not only that, it is a centuries-long history of Swiss commodity trade being caught up in colonial, and later postcolonial entanglements which remains largely obscured by public debate. 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. At the same time, by being instrumental for early modern industrialization as well as contemporary finance, Swiss trading activities have influenced vivid cultural, affective and moral economies. They have contributed to Swiss wealth, but also to national narratives of independence, safety and white supremacy.00In this hybrid media publication gold together with its entanglements and metabolisms serves as starting point in order to track down the elusive and often invisible paths of molecules, affects and violence. Alongside knowbotiq?s artistic practice emanating from the project?Swiss Psychotropic Gold? (2016-17) and contributions by collaborators, it presents contributions focusing on struggles around illegal gold mining, racialized processes of extraction, deep sea mining and raw material politics alchemic trading of gold, the social history of the molecule, molecular strikes, golden amnesia and psychotropic refineries.