SOMEWHERE ELSE ENTIRELY, 2024

exhibition created for „Die Grüne Kammer“ –
a group show at Fotogalerie Vienna, highlighting alternative and sustainable photograhic practices 

Moving through the Danube‘s riparian forest of Lobau, Vienna, I trace which other places, times and materials are connected to this area, to my photographic practice, to my body touching, smelling, sensing this environment. From the ash collected from campfires on the Danube island, to the foraged nettles on site (both used to develop the photographs). The nettles connect me to the forced labourers that had to plant them in Lobau during the first world war, to counter the shortage of fibres for clothing. The ash is a link to the refuse incineration plant of Vienna, that sends off its ash to be added into concrete mixtures. An entire city‘s waste becoming also its structures. One of them being the oil refinery located in Lobau – its tanks filled mostly with oil from Lybia. My body expands. The bitumen that is part of the oil is also part of the asphalt tunnel that is planned to seal a large underground area of Lobau. The sticky, black substance crumbles between my fingers. As I put my photographs into the fixing liquid, the silver of the emulsion is released from the paper. It is now coating parts of old copper pipes, while my body reaches over to those places where the silver or copper once was mined, was pulled from the earth. The soil of the Lobau meadows is still wet from a recent rainstorm. I run my fingers across its surface layer. The pattern forms a web.

if you can, use both hands

to tie the extra knot for safety

for remembering

the parts of your body

that grew

elsewhere

that became porous

the parts that became mixed up

scattered across the earth

that is

rock, soil, minerals

and air

you: the weather – the water

and you: the asphalt – the concrete