“Usually, gig workers receive their tasks through a cell phone app, while they often handle the actual tasks offline, for example as bicycle or car couriers. The museum has documented the experiences of ten gig workers during 2021. Here you can follow their stories.”

-Swedish Museum of Work

The photo documentation was done in three Swedish cities and is commissioned by Swedish Museum of Work (Arbetets Museum), as a part of their exhibition about the future of work and labor – Digitopia. It is presented together with quotes by the interviewed workers and voiced by actors from the theatre Östgötateatern.

In the beginning in the early ’2000s there were almost 16 000 workers living and working within the factory walls. It was a small society with apartments, shops, clinics and recreation facilities, built in a rural region. Eventually, even a small city with other industries slowly emerged around the factory.

With time the living standards in the country rose and with that the cost of the workforce as well. So, the production began to move to other countries in Asia where the price still is less. At the time of my stay there were only around 1600 workers left and nobody was longer living there.

Those who are left talked fondly of their memories of their past life in the factory, but with a heavy sigh as they looked to the inevitable future – as China’s title of ‘The Production Floor of the World’ passes on to other countries, and their factory closes it’s gates for good.

‘The Factory’ is about the workers of a large shoe factory in Tanzhou, China. A story that has fallen in between the bigger headlines of geopolitical issues of West and East, yet still is related to them – About the people behind the products we consume and about the ongoing dismantling of “Made in China”.