An Exploration of Resilience and Connection
When we think of a mountain, whether literally or figuratively, our feelings are stirred: strength, fragility, respect, fear, eternity, silence, power, summit, miracle, excitement, curiosity, success, nature, movement, anxiety, liberation, challenge, stability, cold, warmth, majesty, existence, universe, climate change, growth, humility, ascent, descent, magnificence, horizons, solitude, connection etc.
“Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” is a profound metaphor for the human spirit’s capacity to overcome obstacles with the strong essence of resilience. But what if the mountains are way too high?
With their majestic and imposing presence, mountains have long symbolised the peaks of human ambition and the daunting challenges we face. Standing at the base of a mountain and looking up is confronting the magnitude of our aspirations and the obstacles that lie ahead. This perspective is not just about the physical ascent but a journey through the varied landscapes of personal, social, professional, and emotional trials.
Activities and explorations around the theme of mountains with artists, researchers, and citizens
Artists are invited to initiate processes, implement activities, and develop works that address or incorporate the theme of Mountains. We encourage them to focus on the unique characteristics of the local environment and the residency’s surroundings. In collaboration with the host institution and local partners, artists can work in various media and artistic fields. The new works will be presented to the public at the end of the residency. Various local and international representatives and experts will support and accompany the program and creative processes. The artistic work should serve as a translation and dialogue with citizens. Additionally, we will provide artists with opportunities to understand scientific topics and gain firsthand experience.
This ascent is as much about the journey as it is about reaching the summit. In this exploration, we invite artists, researchers, and citizens to engage with the topic of mountains in the broadest sense and tell us about their journeys. Through various mediums and collaborations, we aim to create a dialogue between the tangible and the symbolic, the individual and the collective, between highs and lows, metaphor and reality.
As part of the three-year Magic Carpets EU project cycle, “Kolaboratorium” MC Innsbruck aims to create a safe space for artistic experiments. This space will enable the collection, expansion, and cultivation of multiple perspectives, promoting critical reflection and action. Our initiatives include exchanges, engagements, and various learning formats for and with the local, regional, and international (not only ) cultural community landscapes through meaningful collaborations.
Therefore, our Local Cooperation Partners This Year:
KUNSTRAUM INNSBRUCK
GIRLS ON ICE / UNIVERSITY OF INNSBRUCK
Collaboration (June- July 2024)
KUNSTRAUM INNSBRUCK is our local partner organization. As a well-established gallery and art institution on the local contemporary scene, it presents aesthetic concepts and serves as a space for socio-political and environmental issues. KUNSTRAUM uses art as a powerful tool to communicate life through a different language, basing its program on topics that are at the pulse of our time.
SUMMER SCHOOL PROJECT has been created as an experimental meeting place where people of different generations and interests can come together to experience artistic work. The project aims to merge artistic practices and critical knowledge, cultural productions, and contemporary socio-political and environmental issues, with an interdisciplinary educational offer. Magic Carpets Innsbruck co-curates the Summer school program for the 2—year, offering courses with international Artists from the MC artist pool at our venue open space. innsbruck.
The KUNSTRAUM INNSBRUCK Summer School 26.06. — 04.07.24 (Registration deadline until 18.06.24)
Wed, 26.06.24 CURATING POLITICALLY with Anamarija Batista
Work, curatorial practice, reflection on social relationships
Sat, 29./ Sun, 30.06. 10:00 – 14:00
MEASURING TIME BY WALKING with Charlotte Ostritsch / MAGIC CARPETS
Cyanotype printing, multi-sensory investigation, site-specific, performative actions
Wed, 03.07.24 17:00 – 21:00
OOOH, HMMMHH, AHAA, OK … listen to me – with Maria Walcher
Sound, space, object, installation
Thu, 04.07.24 17:00 – 21:00
DRAW ALL OVER THE PLACE with Patrick Bonato
Drawing, painting, hidden object picture, poster
Collaboration (August -October 2024):
GIRLS ON ICE leads tuition-free multi-day expeditions for high school girls that interweave science, art, and backcountry travel. Organized by a community of scientists, these expeditions take place on a glacier in the Ötztal. Throughout each expedition, the team engages in scientific and artistic inquiry about the surrounding environment. In small groups, participants design and conduct scientific projects, which they present to the public on the last full day of their expeditions.
Inspiring Girls on Ice Expeditions aims to increase the participation and diversity of marginalized genders in field sciences and outdoor activities. They foster supportiveness and inclusiveness. The program provides young women with opportunities to realize their potential in science, art, and mountains. Finally, GIRLS ON ICE focuses on individual empowerment and community building.
Local Artist:
Dr Lindsey Nicholson
Born in 1978 in the UK, Lindsey is an artist and scientist and a member of ParTerre 6 studio in Innsbruck. Her artistic work explores the boundaries of scientific and artistic inquiry/understanding and how they can generate meaning in society – always revealing in the personal process but never yet happy with the product. Her scientific research on glaciers focuses on connecting innovative field measurements with state-of-the-art numerical modelling. She holds a BSc in Geography, a PhD in Glaciology and an MA in Applied Art. Lindsey is an Assistant Professor, Priv-Doz, PhD at Atmospheric and Cryospheric Science, University of Innsbruck, and co-founder of Girls on Ice Innsbruck. Her multimedia artistic practice tends towards sculptural and spatial work, often integrating light and shadow with structure to explore the unseen. Her artistic work on glaciers explores the material and process of ice as a means to understand emergent processes and irreversibility.
International Artist:
Charlotte Ostritsch
Born. 1980, Örebro, Sweden… is a Swedish artist with a master’s degree in fine arts from Umeå Academy of Fine Arts. She also holds a BA in rhetoric and anthropology. Her works are often based on site-specific performative actions, which then turn into temporary installations – remnants of human activity.
The work can be seen as futile attempts to patch up a crumbling world by salvaging the discarded material shards that are the treasures of the urban collector and by using them in new ways to revitalize and give them context. Keywords are care and concern for places and remains, value creation, and relation between the seemingly detached and useless.
Her interest in knowledge creation and the creative process is a core of her practice. As part of her artistic practices, she teaches at a preparatory art school, occasionally co-creates/collaborates with other artists, and coordinates exhibitions.
www.charlotteostritsch.com
IG: lotte.ostritsch
We will soon announce the participation of other artists and the program that will be created over the next few months.
This Magic Carpets project year also represents the peak of our 3-year Creative Europe project cycle, which will be crowned with a joint final exhibition and a symposium in Estonia as part of the Tartu 2024 European Capital of Culture program.