Uta Kögelsberger

For example, East Tyrol. A foehn storm with high winds of up to 180 km/h. What took a century to grow is demolished in a matter of seconds. More than a million cubic meters of timber damage as the result of the fatal interplay of wind, snow buildup, drought and insect infestation. For forest owners an economic disaster. For the communities below these protective forests an ever-increasing threat.

The artist Uta Kögelsberger looks at how climate change impacts our forests. Her work practice is meticulous. For this project alone, she travelled to East Tyrol and the Ziller Valley seven times and spent a total of four months on site conducting research and countless conversations with experts and with those involved. From thousands of individual shots the incredible balance in the work of this artist begins to crystallise into one picture– a synthesis of information and emotion, insight and connectedness.

Information and Connectedness

At first glance one might think one is dealing with documentary work. This layer of perception, however, is repeatedly challenged, amended, transformed. In the calamity of man, who is desperately searching for a solution to a problem that he himself has created, and in the artist’s words, over which he has lost all control, objective reporting becomes story, facts lead to personal destinies, truths transform into examples. The artist’s means of expression in this project are film and photography, media capable of embodying and representing different qualities of time. The formal means she employs to achieve this end are often imperceptible. The subtly enhanced reflections of the markings on those trees selected to be felled. A raised perspective produces shots of raw force. The division of a video into three parts calls to mind the triptychs of historical altars. The aesthetic of a poetic enlightenment, of an enlightened poetry.

Uta Kögelsberger lives in London and California and is a professor of fine art at Newcastle University, England. She received the prestigious Royal Academy’s Charles Wollaston Award.

The concert has been on April 17, 2024.

The concert

INN SITU’s concert format developed especially in resonance with the exhibition: The human perspective of nature is invariably shaped by the observer. It usually tells as much about itself as about the object being observed. It comes therefore as no surprise that over the centuries, music has dealt in manifold ways with Nature as the “other”.

The concert program included works from Early Italian Baroque to improvisations to a world premiere by the Austrian composer Peter Jakober. Rupert Enticknap, Richard Eigner and Martin Mallaun interpret this music with their own tools: countertenor, zither, live electronics and field recordings.

Martin Mallaun

“Whether in improvisation, electronic music, baroque lute music, alpine folk music or contemporary music, the Tyrol-born performer is always searching for new forms of sonic and stylistic expression on the zither.” (music information center austria)

In addition to studying zither performance at the Tyrolean State Conservatory, Martin Mallaun also majored in botany at the University of Innsbruck – in the context of this project an ideal combination in resonance with Uta Kögelsberger’s work.

Martin Mallaun performs concerts internationally and makes guest appearances at such renowned festivals as the Edinburgh International Festival (UK), Munich Biennale (DE) or Wien Modern (AT). As a botanist he has been researching the effects of climate change on the vegetation of Alpine ecosystems as part of the GLORIA research project since 2001. (www.gloria.ac.at).

Rupert Enticknap

is a Berlin-based countertenor and artist, whose range includes opera, contemporary music, dance and installations. As a singer specialising in both baroque and contemporary music he has performed at the ROH Covent Garden, Bavarian State Opera and La Monnaie in Brussels, among others.

Richard Eigner

is a composer, sound artist and percussionist. The focus of his work lies in the symbiotic use of acoustic elements and electronically generated sounds. In Austria he ranks as one of the leading artists engaged in the integration of field recordings.

In addition to his work as a musician, Richard Eigner also teaches the class “TransArts” at the University of Applied Arts Vienna.

The dialogue took place on April 18th at 7 p.m. in the BTV Stadtforum in Innsbruck.

Each speaker selected a work from the exhibition and discusses these before and with the audience. An open dialogue between various perspectives, with music and inspired by the exhibition.

Richard Eigner

is as a composer, sound artist and percussionist. In his music he transcends the boundaries of “experimental acoustic music” and “electronica”. He is involved in numerous sonic projects, collaborating, among others, with Martin Mallaun and the writer Elisabeth R. Hager on an acoustic “archive of rare species”.

Uta Kögelsberger

lives in London and California and is professor of fine art at Newcastle University, England. Her works have been shown at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, the Vincent Price Art Museum in Los Angeles and the Millard Sheets Art Center in Pomona, California, among others.

Martin Mallaun

studied zither performance at the Tyrolean State Conservatory and majored in botany at the University of Innsbruck. In addition to being a freelance musician he also teaches zither at the Tyrol Music School Association and at the Anton Bruckner Private University in Linz. As a botanist he has been researching the effects of climate change on the vegetation of Alpine ecosystems as part of the GLORIA research project since 2001.

Oliwia Murawska

is a senior lecturer at the Institute of Historical Sciences and European Ethnology at the University of Innsbruck. Her interest in the forest derives from her research work and her focus on posthumanist positions, in which the forest invariably plays a key role. Among the main topics of her current work are post-humanism, environmental anthropology, the Anthropocene and anthropogenic climate change. She co-publishes the Austrian Journal of Folklore (ÖZV).

Kurt Ziegner

is a forester, Head of the Forest Division of the Tyrolean Regional Government and President of the Tyrolean Forest Association (TFV). He is an expert on the “Climate Smart Mountain Forest” and is in charge of developing the Tyrolean Forest Service’s strategy for adapting the forest for climate change.