Between photography, cinema and performance

An artist with a medium one certainly doesn’t see every day: the flipbook is a time-based object that is set in motion by the viewers themselves. Before our very eyes, individual photographs give rise to animated scenes with a beginning and an end. As soon as the last page is flipped, the flipbook is transformed back into the deconstruction of itself as a sequence of analogue images. On the one hand this medium possesses the apparent triviality of a toy, yet on the other, there is a strange synchronous complexity about it, making it object, series of photos and film all at once.

© Volker Gerling

The physics behind the magic of these wonderful image sequences: a SLR camera that, with the help of a motor, takes 36 shots in 12 seconds. Our brain is capable of merging these rapidly flipped individual images into a smoothly flowing motion.

© Volker Gerling

“Volker Gerling captures the magic of the transitory and nearly invisible. His snapshots are poetic blinks of the eye lasting precisely 12 seconds.”

To Volker Gerling, the production process and the outcome are equally important: On long wanderings he carries his flipbooks on a hawker’s tray, and as he shows them, he meets new protagonists. Covering long distances on foot, the slow progress involved, meeting people through already existing flipbooks, all these are genuine elements of this work.

© Volker Gerling

Along with his “traveling exhibitions” Volker Gerling has gained an international reputation above all as a successful stage artist who has presented his flipbooks to audiences at art and theatre festivals all over the world.

© Volker Gerling

For INN SITU, the artist was invited to create new works in Tyrol and Vorarlberg. The exhibition at the BTV Stadtforum will be the first comprehensive presentation of Volker Gerling’s work in a visual arts context. The show will include videos of roughly 20 works and their background stories as well as individual portraits and glimpses into the artist’s work method.

Volker Gerling’s Flipbook Cinema

Born in Hilden, North Rhine-Westphalia, in 1968, he studied at the Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF in Potsdam-Babelsberg and has worked at the interface between photography and film since 1998. Gerling’s stage show, which he has performed at art and theatre festivals in some 30 countries on four continents to date, is based on numerous long walks and his experiences and encounters along the way. In 2015 he won the Total Theatre Award at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. The artist lives with his family in the Schorfheide near Berlin.

© Volker Gerling

INN SITU – Photography, music, dialogue

For this series we ask photographic artists working internationally to reflect on their connection with Tyrol and Vorarlberg and to create an original exhibition based on this encounter. Outside view meets inside perspective. Photography as a strategy to view our own world through the eyes of others.

Our focus here lies on artistic positions in which the process of perception and the development of the work on site both constitute important elements of the work itself.

Parallel to this, we invite musicians from the region to produce a new concert in artistic resonance with the photographic works. The dramaturgical triad of the INN SITU series is rounded off with a series of commentary dialogues combining science and everyday culture. All exhibitions and concerts hosted by INN SITU are original works developed specifically for the BTV Stadtforum.

In the lute – a musical portrait of an instrument

A unique sound experience in the Ton Halle at the BTV Stadtforum. With the help of a multi-channel speaker system, the sound of the lute was electronically amplified, densified and spatialized. Not randomly, however, but according to the baroque intention, which always focuses on human expression! Original compositions in dialogue with the repertoire of former periods.

The historical instrument and the potential of today’s electronic equipment.

An immersive sound experience with music by David Bergmüller, Francesco da Milano, Robert de Visée and Johann Hieronymus Kapsberger, among others.

David Bergmüller

© Theresa Pewal

Known for his “virtuoso lyricism” (Tiroler Tageszeitung) and his “extraordinarily subtle and intoxicating playing” (Liechtensteiner Volksblatt), David Bergmüller is one of the most rousing and multifaceted lutenists of his generation. His virtuoso performances range from historically informed performance practice to new compositions.

He composes for his own instruments and projects, but numerous other composers have also written works for him, including Pia Palme, Arturo Fuentes, Gilad Hochman, Manuel Durão or Franz Bauer.

David Bergmüller was the first lutenist to win the Franz Joseph Aumann Prize at the H.I.F. Biber Competition for Early Music. With his ensemble sferraina he was nominated for the German Record Critic’s Award in the category “Crossover Productions.”

Born in Hall in 1989, he started to learn guitar when he was eight years old. While studying classical guitar with Stefan Hackl at the Tyrolean State Conservatory, Bergmüller discovered his fascination for the lute. He attended master classes with Hopkinson Smith and Rolf Lislevand. In 2018, after graduating from the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis and the State University of Music Trossingen, David Bergmüller became one of the youngest music professors appointed to the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln. He currently lives in Vienna.

Florian Rabl

© Theresa Pewal

Born in Rum in 1987, Rabl is a recording engineer and Tonmeister. He is in charge of various productions for such clients as the Vienna Boys’ Choir, Manu Delago, radio.string.quartet and Capella de la Torre. For his recordings he has won such awards as the Ö1 Pasticcio Prize and the Pizzicato Supersonic Award, and he has been nominated to the long list of the German Record Critic’s Award multiple times. In addition to his freelance work, he also works for the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna as a recording engineer and audiovisual infrastructure developer.

Concerts commissioned by INN SITU to date

INN SITU 1: RIGHT HERE!

Composition class of Franz Baur at the Tyrolean State Conservatory (TLK), Benedikt Huber, Elias Praxmarer, Andreas Trenkwalder, Manuel Zwerger

INN SITU 2: TIME LEAP

Walter Rumer and ensemble, double bassist of the ensemble “Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin”, head of the double bass class at the Tyrolean State Conservatory

INN SITU 3: MOUNTAINWORKS

Christof Dienz and ensemble, composer, bassoon and zither soloist

INN SITU 4: THE FAULT LINE

R.E.T. Brass Band musicians performing in various formations and conducted by Andreas Lackner

INN SITU 5: WUNDERKAMMER, INN SITU 6: LIGHT WORKS

(Concerts couldn’t take place during this time due to the pandemic)

INN SITU 7: THE PHOTO ALBUM

Tyrolean percussionist Tobias Steinberger with the sextet SEPP, the fire dancer Antonia Steinberger and the singer Anna Widauer