As part of the INN SITU series, photographers focus on the Tyrol/Vorarlberg region. For INN SITU, Armin Linke took photographs at the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI). Of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Innsbruck, one of the world’s outstanding research centres in this field. At first glance, this may seem a strange choice, since quantum physical states cannot be depicted at all with photographic methods. But in this INN SITU project, the focus is not on the object itself, but on the process that leads to it.
In his work, the photo artist and filmmaker Armin Linke asks questions about the operating system of our culture: social rules and technological standards, power relations and traditions, infrastructures or constraints … The imperceptible constitution of a society. Armin Linke shows us the laboratory as a space for thinking, inventing, experimenting, as a tool for research. The images that emerge demystify the myth of ingenious research with its monstrous apparatuses and dreamlike illustrations of microcosmic universes. Almost imperceptibly, his images create an enlightened counter-aesthetic. Synchronous with the subversion of conventional viewing patterns, the formal quality of Armin Linke’s photography, the immersive scenography of the exhibition begin to assert themselves against our inner images of science and its representation. What do we see instead? Or rather: how do we see instead?

Armin Linke, *1966 in Milan.