The Fabrikzeitung cannot be understood without the building that gave it its name. The Rote Fabrik — a former industrial complex on the shore of Lake Zürich — was occupied in 1980 during the youth revolts that convulsed the city after 60 million francs were earmarked for the opera house while alternative culture had nowhere to go. The occupiers demanded: Lasst uns die Rote Fabrik — let us have the Red Factory. The city relented. What emerged was one of Europe’s most significant alternative cultural centres, and in 1984, the centre launched its own publication: the Fabrikzeitung.
For nearly four decades, the magazine appeared ten times a year — each issue built around a single theme explored through essays, reportage, and cultural criticism by Swiss and international authors. The subjects were the ones that daily journalism does not have the time or inclination to pursue: structural inequality, forgotten histories, cultural phenomena that require more than a headline to understand. A recent issue devoted itself entirely to the Rote Fabrik’s own contested history, inviting seven writers to imagine the alternatives to the alternative — what the building could have been, should have been, might yet become.
In late 2023, the Rote Fabrik faced a financial crisis that threatened the entire operation. Among the casualties was the Fabrikzeitung: the editorial team, freshly hired, was let go after less than a year, and the final issue appeared in February 2024. The website describes the magazine as entering a “transformation phase.” Whether it will return in a new form remains to be seen, but the archive of hundreds of issues stands as a record of what independent cultural journalism can achieve when it has a building, a community, and four decades of stubbornness behind it.
<a href="https://www.fabrikzeitung.ch/">Visit Fabrikzeitung