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Auf bekannten Wegen
National Socialism in Ötztal
Commissioned by the Ötztaler Museen, this work follows traces of National Socialism in Ötztal, the valley I grew up in. I encountered fragments of this dark past in archives and cellars, in stories, in names of places and family histories, in museum storage rooms and in the landscape familiar to me.
I wanted to understand how this past becomes visible in a place I know. What remains? What continues to be told? What disappears in the gaps of our memory?
The work brings archival material together with photographs and reenactments. Bodies appear in places where images are missing. These reconstructions remain deliberately fragile, carrying the gaps and uncertainties of the material they draw on. The present enters the image, and the attempt to approach the past stays visible.
I often thought of Walter Benjamin’s image of excavation. For me, remembering meant working through layers, turning fragments over, leaving soil attached. It also meant considering where I stood in the terrain. I was looking for this history in the place I come from.
EXHIBITION
2025 / Auf den Zweiten Blick – NS Zeit im Ötztal / solo
Ötztaler Museen, Längenfeld, AT