Verena Roßbacher

The PHOTO ALBUM | Pictures of a trip, a literary view

Photography

6th October 2021 until 22th January 2022
Exhibition opening: 5th October, 7 p.m.
Free entrance

Photography and literature. The fictionalization of a document. The current INN SITU project reflects the process of a transformation through narrative appropriation. The objective reproduction of streets, village views, landscapes – the stops along a journey – is transformed into the backdrop of a narrative. Supposedly silent, hundred-year-old, black-and-white prints of amateur quality suddenly become the spaces of imagination of three people with their yearnings, ideas and fates. The two-dimensional photographic representations of sights seen a thousand times turn into the stage of a love story.

The original visual material is ideal: a series of early photographs about which we know virtually nothing. Purchased in 2007 in an eBay auction by the library of the Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum (Tyrolean State Museum Ferdinandeum) and consisting of roughly 60 photographs of a trip from Munich to Tyrol. Two men and a woman visit selected sites in Tyrol and return home eight days later via Kufstein. The photos are taken in 1912; ten years later, one of the protagonists has a bookbinder turn the whole bundle into an elaborately bound album, which he gives to his wife as a memento of their first holiday together.
The identities of the three figures, what their family backgrounds or individual relationships to each other are – these things remain a mystery. A narrative void, at the same time a literary carte blanche for a writer of Verena Roßbacher’s calibre, whom we have commissioned to view the album as the point of departure for a picture story.

Two spaces – one transformation

In one room of the gallery we show the photographs from the album in the historical and scholarly context of an informative exhibition about the history of travel to Tyrol compiled from the collection of the museum library of the Ferdinandeum. In the other, the photos become elements of a literary-photographic road movie: an artistic amalgam of document and fiction and at the same time the contemplation of photography as an everyday cultural practice over the generations – from our great-grandparents’ day to the present.

Verena Roßbacher

Born in Bludenz/Vorarlberg in 1979, grew up in Austria and Switzerland, studied philosophy, German philology, and theology for several semesters in Zurich before transferring to the German Institute for Literature in Leipzig. She teaches creative writing at the Swiss Institute for Literature in Biel.
“Ich war Diener im Hause Hobbs” is her third novel published by Kiepenheuer & Witsch following her debut “Verlangen nach Drachen” and “Schwätzen und Schlachten”. Verena Roßbacher lives and works in Berlin.

A cooperation with the library of the Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum. Curator and basic concept: Hans-Joachim Gögl, artistic director INN SITU. Creation of the companion exhibition: Roland Sila in collaboration with Iris Kathan library of the Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum. Video production: Thomas Osl. The author herself will be reading.

David Bergmüller

LIGHT WORKS

Music

PHOTO SOUND

Musical improvisation and short guided tour

For a quick after-work stop: Admission free. Three pieces of music for three works in the exhibition. Plus a short introduction. Total duration: 30 minutes.

The tours take place on site in the BTV Stadtforum, registration is required. Please bring a negative COVID-19 test, a vaccination certificate or proof of recovery with you.

Wednesday, 14 July 2021, 6 to 6.30 p.m., BTV Stadtforum Innsbruck, registration required, the 3-G-rule applies

David Bergmüller

is one of the outstanding soloists for his instrument. The Tyrolean lute virtuoso studied with Hopkinson Smith at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis and with Rolf Lislevand at the Musikhochschule Trossingen. He has performed with the Concentus Musicus Wien and the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, among others, and played with prominent figures such as Maurice Steger, Alessandro De Marchi and Avi Avital. As a soloist, he won the “Franz Joseph Aumann” award at the H.I.F. Biber Competition in St. Florian in 2017. He has been professor of lute at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz in Cologne since 2018.

WUNDERKAMMER

Dialogue

A dialogue between Gianluca Crepaldi, psychoanalyst, Gabriela Kompatscher-Gufler, co-founder of the Innsbruck Human-Animal-Studies-Team, Veronika Sandbichler, director of Ambras Castle and Andreas Tentschert, pianist. The speakers each select a picture from the exhibition and exchange their views about it with each other. Free-flowing dialogue with music, reflecting different points of view, inspired by the exhibition.

Due to the coronavirus situation, the dialogue and the guided tour before the dialogue on September 25th were canceled.

Gianluca Crepaldi

is a research associate at the Institute of Psychosocial Intervention and Communications Research at the University of Innsbruck and a practising psychoanalyst. He is the academic director of the university’s psychotherapy foundation course and director of training at the Psychoanalytic Seminar Innsbruck.

Veronika Sandbichler

studied art history at the University of Innsbruck. She has served as the director of Castle Ambras since 2010. Her research focuses on court celebrations of the Habsburgs during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, museology and the history of the collections at Castle Ambras. Numerous publications, for example, the history of the collection.

Gabriela Kompatscher-Gufler

is an associate professor of Latin philology at the Leopold-Franzens University Innsbruck. Her research focuses on medieval Latin texts and specifically the themes of “humans and animals in the Middle Ages” and human-animal studies. Her key concern in this area is the improvement of living conditions for non-human animals through the broadest possible transfer of knowledge.

IS_InnSitu_2020_05_Vermittlungsprogramm1

Andreas Tentschert

studied educational science and music science at the University of Innsbruck. He also studied jazz piano at the Anton Bruckner Private University, Linz. He has taught subjects such as jazz piano and improvisation at the Mozarteum in Salzburg since 2012. The artist has performed with musicians such as Yasmo & die Klangkantine, Nina “Fiva” Sonnenberg, Mono & Nikitaman, Georg Breinschmid, Joseph Bowie and many others.