| Andrej Ivančić

edited version of Die Grubertaler – „Cordula Grün – Josh Cover“
inspired by Waldfest Haiming 2022

exhibition, 2022

Before coming to Tyrol, I had an impression that it is full of nature. However, since I was looking out of the train window, I could sense that something was off. Everything looked artificial, like I was looking at a maquette, not a landscape. Everything was ordered.

But what is nature? Does nature exist in opposition to humans? Or are humans part of nature? Does nature have to be wild or can it be tame? Can it be nature, if it is exclusively seen as a resource? All these questions were the leitmotiv of the previous weeks. 

The fact that the human intervention is so visible and so impactful never gave me a sensation that I was in nature. In the partitioned and fenced off landscape I never felt like I was in the wild. But I don’t share the stance of human-nature dualism. Humans have always been a part of nature. It is just that the way and the scale at which it is happening here points me towards a conclusion that in this society nature is treated as the other that must be tamed and taken care of like the shepherd looks after their flock of sheep. 

This I have seen from the reactions to my barefoot venture to the Rietzer Grießkogel. All of them were as though I was doing something mad, to an extent even forbidden. On one hand the landscape is so tame and so hospitable, but on the other the relationship towards it from the people who live here seems that it is something distant and hostile which needs to be segregated. 

And with it comes the partitioning, the fences, the order and the efficiency. As a part of the ordering, various signs can be seen signalizing to the wanderer that the fenced off territories are off limits – „PRIVAT“. They are there as though that the fence itself isn’t sufficiently conveying it. It can also be seen on labels of soft drinks and sparkling water – „Tyrolian Water. Completely Private“. It appears as though it is fetishized […]

Andrej Ivančić

@komunjist