Book Talk

Conversations about new books by
Miriam Bajtala | Roland Fischer-Briand | Markus Krottendorfer | Hanna Schimek

The artists in conversation with: Rainer Iglar, Michael Mauracher, Peter Schreiner and Nadine Weixler (FOTOHOF>EDITION)

The title and cover of Miriam Bajtala’s artist book are programmatically borrowed from a performance: a spatial installation of her work index. Performance visitors wore 99 title plates of her works. Today, the now 127 »Körper ihrer Arbeit« have found their organized form in the pink-colored archive of this book: from conceptual, multi-layered, funny and »really good« works to discarded, unrepresentative and previously invisible works. Miriam Bajtala has been formulating her multifaceted, sometimes autobiographical work, which deals with themes of perception, memory, (self-)empowerment, testimony and representation, in the media of video, video installation, drawing, photography and performance for around 25 years.
FOTOHOF>EDITION Vol. 372

In twenty representative photo albums, the great Austrian actor, operetta tenor and director Hubert Marischka (1882−1959) documented all aspects of his stage work during his lifetime. This personal cross-section not only reflects half a century of theater history from the Austro-Hungarian era through to the early years of the 1950s; the albums are also an impressive record of developments in stage photography. This volume shows a selection of highlights from the photo albums and is supplemented by photographs of two spectacular revues of the 1920s in which Marischka was involved.
FOTOHOF>EDITION Vol. 366

In and through his artistic practice, photographer Markus Krottendorfer has embarked on a global search of places where something about the way of world, about its history, becomes identifiable and clear, holding out the promise of an understanding and insight into its workings and mysteries. The geographical spectrum of places, spaces and phenomena is as diverse as the questions, myths, mysteries, and utopian potential they represent. In the present photographic series entitled »Terminal«, Athen’s Eillinikon airport, which shut down in 2001, becomes the setting for the artistic interventions and initiatives of Markus Krottendorfer’s stage-managed photography, which generates the potential for other images and unusual narratives. (Christian Egger)
FOTOHOF>EDITION Vol. 352

»I thought for quite a long time before I started using Instagram. My questions were: What are my personal motives for using this platform? What are my content and aesthetic criteria for future posts? What are my personal rules of the game? The quarantine window associated with Covid-19 motivated me to start posting images and texts. I take a lot of time to select images, texts and hashtags and I enjoy working on them. My contributions can be seen as a picture atlas when viewed together. One source of inspiration for this is the »Mnemosyne Atlas« by Aby Warburg. The composition of the images follows the processes of film editing. The mental space between the images, as it were, is just as relevant to me as their order. The selected contributions and themes relate to what I am dealing with at the moment. Diary-like.«
FOTOHOF>EDITION Vol. 354