MICHAEL HIRSCHBICHLER

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oil, ink, lac­quer, liq­uid asphalt, liq­uid rub­ber and adhe­sive tape on paper
42 cm x 29.7 cm each
2015

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The term “Jam­merthal” appears in numer­ous Ger­man-lan­guage texts, espe­cial­ly from the Baroque peri­od. It express­es a dual con­cept of the world. Earth­ly life is under­stood as a con­di­tion char­ac­ter­ized by mis­ery, dark­ness, and suf­fer­ing, con­trast­ed with the promise of sal­va­tion in a heav­en­ly par­adise. The “Jam­merthal Era­sures” are a lit­er­ary for­ay through this dichotom­i­cal occi­den­tal think­ing, between the lamen­ta­tion of this world and the hope of the here­after, between suf­fer­ing and sal­va­tion. The basis for this are fac­sim­i­le scans of book pages from the 15th cen­tu­ry onwards, on which the term “Jam­merthal” appears. Using the tech­nique of eras­ing a large part of the text, by cross­ing out with ink, oil, var­nish, liq­uid rub­ber, liq­uid asphalt and adhe­sive tape, new con­tem­po­rary poem-like texts are cre­at­ed that were already con­tained on the old pages as latent lay­ers of mean­ing. In an archae­ol­o­gy of intel­lec­tu­al his­to­ry, ide­olo­gies are bro­ken open from the per­spec­tive of the present, hid­den con­tents are brought to light, and new mean­ings are constructed.

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