In the course of what has been referred to as the refugee crisis since the summer of 2015 the term ‘upper limit’ was introduced into the Austrian domestic political debate as both a theoretical and, thereafter, factual notion. In his new artist’s book featuring photographs of Christian churches in central Europe loosely alternating with images of swarms of birds in the Algerian skies, Christian Wachter wonders whether ‘in the dispute over the right of asylum and basic existential provision (…) it might not be better to relate that upper limit to top incomes and assets?’. Wachter spans an associative network of formal and substantive levels of meaning, referencing on the one hand the contrapuntal music form of the fugue, Lat. fuga – i.e. flight, running away – and the widespread fears relating to differences in religious confessions and cultures.

Christian Wachter, *1949 in Oberwart, Austria. Lives and works in Vienna, Austria.