The artists’ publication “Gelobtes Land / Promised Land” is the result of a variety of collaborations and interpretations in succession.
In 2007, photographer Christa Ziegler released a comprehensive selection of pictures, which have been taken since 2001 mainly on tours through Zurich, with loose ideas about motivic and formal connections, for editing and left formats, rhythms and sequences to the designer Claudia Röthlisberger. The result is an atmospherically condensed photographic essay on large-format picture sheets. In the summer of 2007, this compilation, which was published as a poster edition under the title “O.T. (Ohne Titel / Object trouvé)”, was presented in the exhibition “Bilder zum mitnehmen” at message salon downtown. Seamlessly laid out on a low pedestal, the printed sheets formed a large picture falling off at the edges and simultaneously a sculpture. On the opening evening, Christa Ziegler stood behind the counter of the former business premises on Langstrasse and numbered and signed the sheets that visitors were allowed to put together.
One year later Christa Ziegler invited Isabel Zürcher as editor and with her the authors Judith Düsberg and Nadine Olonetzky as well as the authors David Signer, Andreas Vogel and Tan Wälchli to react to the composition of the pictures by means of language.
Trix Barmettler and Ursina Landolt have created a generous booklet from the resulting texts, in which the texts in original and translated form a skyline and their reflection in the water lead over the consequences of the pages. The inner structures of the texts are revealed and each forms a slightly different architecture.
The two booklets are held together as loosely as possible, but just as firmly as necessary, by a dust jacket, which allows a parallel and alternating reading of the pictures and texts.
To continue the series of interpretations, the actress Marisa Sophia and the actor Kaspar Weiss have been invited to use the texts and develop a staged reading, which will be performed on the occasion of a presentation of “Gelobtes Land / Promised Land”.