July 1 to August 5, 2016

Jens Goldbeck
«Peter Handke’s Settings»

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Jens Goldbeck is currently working on a photographic project dedicated to locations that figure in Peter Handke’s life and works. For Handke, places often determine the path taken by his writing. These are threshold places: on the outskirts of a city, at the transition between the natural and urban environments, at national borders – comparable to Marc Augé’s “non-places” or the “heterotopias” of Michel Foucault. Many of Handke’s protagonists are travelers, the narrative content emerging from their encounters, observations, and reflections as they roam from one place to another. The names of Handke’s settings resound in our minds, their actual existence inextricably linked to how they are transformed by his writing. Goldbeck visited the town where Handke was born (Griffen, Austria) and his current place of residence (Chaville near Paris), as well as the many settings that play (key) roles in his literature, some of them revisited repeatedly. They include towns and landscapes in the Austrian province of Carinthia, for example Rinkenberg (“Die Wiederholung/Repetition”), Rinkolach (“Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht/My Year in the No-Man’s Bay”), and the town of Zell (“Immer noch Sturm/Storm Still”), as well as locations in Slovenia, for example Jesenice (“Die Wiederholung/Repetition”), and also the Morzg Forest near Salzburg (“Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire/The Lesson of Mont Sainte-Victoire”).

Kunstraum Lakeside is presenting an initial selection of the photographs in this ongoing project. Jens Goldbeck’s images possess a quality that allows us to sense the aura of the settings in Peter Handke’s texts. They place the emphasis on ordinary, unspectacular, or marginal features that guide our gaze and hone our awareness for what makes each location unique.

Jens Goldbeck, born 1967 in Hamburg, University of Fine Arts in Hamburg, lives in Pörtschach, Hamburg and Berlin.

Curator: Hemma Schmutz