This part-inventory, part-essay, part-chronicle weaves together textual and visual references, fragments of literature and the outtakes of the daily landscape in the form of a video commentary on some of the lesser known scientific manuscripts of the past: day-to-day life at the residency is observed both through the lens of history and from the lookout of the present moment, with the library and the hotel being at its visual epicentre.
The artists Katrin Keller and Mia Ćuk have been studying and collecting fragments of cosmological fallacies and confluences of scientific and religious imaginaries that marked the prolific literary output of the 17th-century Jesuit scholar, an eccentric polymath and a disputed innovator Athanasisus Kircher (1602-1680). Emphasizing the poetic capacity of epistemic uncertainties, scientific misconceptions and speculative theories passed on as facts, the research is inspired by Kircher’s two scholarly works sourced at the Andreas Züst library: a strange encyclopedic textbook titled “Mundus Subterraneus”, a peculiar atlas of the natural world and its inner workings, and “Iter Extaticum Coeleste”, a cosmological treatise presented in the form of a celestial dialogue unfolding on a galactic journey.
The video piece is at once an assemblage of working material- books, notes and references being used and discarded in the process of research and a self-reflexive account on the hesitant nature of creating the work.The palimpsest of squences is accompanied by a narration- a mediated dialogue between the two artists discussing the possible directions of the project/ a dialogic rehearsal which comprises the elements of the history of science, religious misticism, natural philosophy and postmodern art, often in a self-satirizing way.
April 2024
Text+Fotos: Katrin Keller, Mia Ćuk
The absent has always been present in the library. The collection was left behind by the collector Andreas Züst and works by itself. But what is a collection without the collector?
During the four weeks and already months before the residency I am dealing with the subject of loss. I am specifically interested in approaching disappearance – led by personal experience but also by the fact that we live in an increasingly lively time of change. I wonder how we can approach mortal process and loss and how they become visible. Various processes of transience also open up a completely different view on all living things. And that one cannot be separated from the other.
In addition to researching the literature in which I explore the topic philosophically, psychologically, medically and lyrically, I also develop my own linguistic dialogue.
Hannah Grüninger is an artist based in Zurich. She works mainly with photography, language and installation.
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Das Abwesende ist in der Bibliothek immer schon präsent. Die Sammlung wurde vom Sammler Andreas Züst zurück und gewissermassen sich selbst überlassen. Was aber ist eine Sammlung ohne die, den Sammler:in?
Während vier Wochen und bereits im Vorfeld der Residency beschäftige ich mich mit dem Thema des Verlusts. Dabei interessiert mich die Annäherung mit Verschwindendem. Dies aus persönlichen Erfahrungen und weil wir in Zeiten enormer Veränderungen leben. Mich nimmt Wunder, auf welche Art wir uns sterblichen Prozessen und Verlusten annähern können und wie sie sichtbar werden. Durch verschiedene Prozesse der Vergänglichkeit eröffnet sich auch ein ganz anderer Blick auf alles Lebendige. Und dass das eine nicht vom anderen zu trennen ist.
Nebst einer Literaturrecherche, in der ich das Thema philosophisch, psychologisch, medizinisch und lyrisch umkreise, entsteht eine eigene sprachliche Auseinandersetzung.
Hannah Grüninger ist Künstlerin und wohnt in Zürich. Sie arbeitet hauptsächlich fotografisch, sprachlich und installativ.
April 2024
Text+Fotos: Hannah Grüninger
During the period of this one month residency the following research proposal was completed by the Oliver Griffin
Archive. Researching Evidence of Extraterrestrials in Switzerland. Primarily looking into literature the Semjase
Silver Star Centre (S.S.S.C) & Free Interest Group Universal (F.I.G.U). Organizations based in Switzerland and
run by ‘Billy’ Eduard Albert Meier-Zafiriou a Swiss national. A an extraterrestrial contactee, who is responsible for
there two spiritual semi-religous international organizations. His ideas are based on some of some of the clearist
photographic images of UFO/ UAP activity known to this day, taken between 1975 to 1979, which he took
personally. This photographic ‘proof’ has be come part of our subconscious foundation of popular belief in what we
expect ‘Aliens’ to look like and can be seen with popular music to television series. Along with H.R.Giger, have
influenced how we think of extraterrestrial life in the extremes. All this information is readily available in the
retracted report that can be found with the Bibliothek Andreas Zust, Appenzellian St. Anton.
Also during this period of time, the following organisation was founded:
Extraterrestrial Material Recovery Unit (E.M.R.U.)
Motto: “You shoot em’ down, were pick em’ up”
This covert unit was created for the exploration of humanity & artistic fascination. In the hope that in the future we
are in contact & retrieval of extraterrestrials & extraterrestrial materials from other world. In a peaceful and intelligent
way outside of Government or Military intervention & control. In the hope to subconsciously info public & popular
culture positivity. Founded at the Bibliothek Andreas Zust, Appenzellian St. Anton on the 9th May 2024, within the
idea to collect physically evidence to backing up creative theories out side of the public eye and to avoid universal
paranoia. Application is through invitation and peer review as in accordance of secrecy of the materials archived.
April 2024
Text+Fotos: Oliver Griffin
Do you also have two same books on your bookshelf?
The first time when we stepped into the Andreas Züst library, we realized that there were a lot of duplicate titles in the collection. In a public library, it’s quite common to have multiple copies of popular titles, so that many readers can borrow them at the same time: one could imagine a shared or simultaneous reading experience happening in the region, without all participants’ awareness of it. But, as we all know, this library was built on the basis of Andreas Züst’s lifelong collection of books. Do people usually buy two copies of the same book? Why would Mr. Züst have so many duplicate books in his collection? For collecting’s sake (Kenneth: actually I can really relate to that)? Or perhaps he also wanted to share his books with someone else? The question always lingers in our hearts and appears every time we enter the space.
“How about we just find out all the duplicate titles in the library?” Toward the end of our month-long residency at the Andreas Züst library, the two of us had still been working on our individual projects separately. While discussing what we could do together, one of us suggested this cheesy idea: a pair finding books in pairs.
One of us suggested the idea, while the other agreed and pushed forward with the execution. “Let’s find all the same books,” a simple phrase, took more time and was much more tedious than we had anticipated. Now, as we reflect on it, completing the project together perhaps holds even more significance than the concept itself. (Do some of you find amusement in the changes in our clothing, socks, and poses in each picture?) Without our continuous mutual criticism — questions like, “Isn’t this too boring? Can it be more fun?”— this project wouldn’t have been completed. So, in every sense, this is not only “A Catalogue for Two” but also “A Catalogue by Two.”
There’s one word that we’ve always struggled with: same, similar, identical, repeated, double, duplicate, twin… Certainly, they apply to different situations. The nuance between words are like the nuance between books (or between human beings). Another tricky question is how to identify the identical items (in the process of making this project, those tricky cases were decided jointly by the two of us. If there was a misjudgment, we take joint responsibility). The similarities and differences among individuals are a larger related topic which we won’t delve into here – but leaving for our readers to ponder.
Why compile this catalogue? Aside from satisfying our personal whims as artists, another initial idea of us is to trace back to that imaginary moment of different people reading the same book. The reason why Andreas Züst had these duplicate titles is unknown and may never be solved. Yet those books lead us to a new gateway into the library — a possibility for practicing collective reading.
This is a project made for plural individuals — for friends, lovers, families, artistic duos, or the encountered strangers. If the two of you, want to read a book simultaneously, in this library, this is the catalogue for you.
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A Catalogue for Two is the collaborative project of the artists Kenneth Ting-Yu Lin and zhaoyuefan during their one month residency at the Andreas Züst library. Alongside their collaboration, the two artists have also worked on two other projects individually:
Wild Sheep Chase: inspired by Haruki Murakami’s novel “A Wild Sheep Chase” which the artist found in one bookshelf at the residency space, also because of the sheep and cow farms nearby, Fan intuitively decided to transform the books into the sheep: she copied pages from selected books in the library and folded them into sheep origami, lead them on an escape from the space. The paper sheep stay in the middle ground between knowledge and non-knowledge, understanding and not-understanding, leaving space for reflections and new fantasies.
A Formosan Boy: Throughout the month, Kenneth kept selecting books from the library that interested him and translated/transcribed the images into brush-ink drawings: he made a conscious effort to draw only using lines, which indicates the painting and calligraphy tradition in the east Asia, as opposed to the western painting tradition, which focuses more on shading. How to view an European library from an Asian perspective – the drawing series is the artist’s attempt to answer this question. The title of the series, “A Formosan Boy”, is artist’s self-reference which also comes from the library: though there are a lot of books about Asia here, the only image we found that related to Kenneth’s homeland, Taiwan (also known as “Formosa”), was a photo describing “a Formosan Boy” inside a photo book called “Japanese Children” published by Asahi Shinbunsha in 1936.
April 2024
Text+Fotos: Kenneth Ting-Yu Lin, zhaoyuefan
How can a crack in one’s own biography be changed from a limbo like state into a cozy, fluffy, gooey, and weird, squishy place full of ideas? To what extent is a pleasurable re-appropriation of a place in which one grew up and has since distanced oneself from even possible? These and more other questions accompanied the stay of Zurich based curator and cultural mediator Marcel Hörler. Inspired by the auto-fictional essay «Returning To Reims» by author and philosopher Didier Eribon and, in particular, his way of shaping personal experiences into a critique of the social world and its forms of oppression, he entered the library with a vague plan but driven by curiosity of using it as an environment to read, collect and arrange ideas, that allows to work without the restrictions of a timetable but instead with the intention of outlining an introduction to an undertaking that will outlast his stay.
Tasks like combining terms and comparing images allowed Marcel to look for similarities, differences as well as possibilities of artistic creation and find more
perspectives for looking at such things like a collar as a piece of jewelry to decorate and a device to dominate a body; a traditional costume as means of identification to signify an affiliation to a group of like-minded people and to differentiate from the majority group in a society; furnishings as status symbols
and objects for reproduction, health, illness, physical-/sexual behavior, hygiene, etc. The list could go on and talks in the hallway would most likely make it even longer.
During four weeks various books passed his hands, not only the ones from Bibliothek Andreas Züst, but also Alpenhof and the Cantonal Library. Some books are on the bookshelves waiting to be explored, while others are nontangible, separated, by a protective shield from us, always ready to show, to point out, portend and foretell us. Often, he had to rely on the people on the site: creative directors, researchers, film lovers, hosts, cooks, enthusiasts, mushroom pickers, writers and waiters, – all companions – for a limited amount of time. Therefore, acts of asking with the urge to go on and a hope to dive in were essential in his process of making such in-(visible) places into his playgrounds.
November 2023
Text+Fotos: Marcel Hörler
‘BAZ Recipe Book’ is an open publication looking at the library as a source of bewildering recipes – those that make us try new ‘dishes’ of life, rather than sticking to the well-proven ones. We spent a month in the Bibliothek Andreas Züst, ‘cooking things up’ – browsing the numerous books in search of recipes that would never come to our mind otherwise:
How to identify a ‘difficult’ cloud?
How to become deliberately available and unavailable?
How to toot your horn?
How to digest the wisdom of the idiots?
These and many other bizarre recipes opened a stage for the discussion and raised the question of certainty and doubt. Are the recipes found in books precise enough to stick to them? Should one believe in everything if it’s written in a book? Do we come to a library to look for answers? Or to find questions?
As we spent days in the library we observed its visitors as well. It seemed that many of them found themselves in the library almost by chance, with no particular plan or task in mind. Similarly to us they were aimlessly browsing through the beautiful books. We thought of ways to give this browsing some purpose or at least some prompts. Inside the books we hid the bookmarks to mark the pages containing the unexpected recipes and encourage the visitors to bookmark their own findings as well.
Although the collection of the library is finite and limited by the date of the untimely passing of its owner, the unexpected recipes that one can find in the books – are potentially infinite and invite the readers for a perpetual continuation of the library’s life.
Text: Olya Korsun, Gatis Murnieks
November 2023
During their stay at Alpenhof the hinterlands editorial team explored lines, links and uneven connections between library and landscape. Going back to the basics
of magazine making, they produced a small zine and used the process of making it to reflect not only on rural landscapes but also on their ways of working together.
The library as landscape
We might already wander through the library like through the fields and hills. It is its own landscape made up of boxes stacked with books, plastic dividers sticking out, some books presented on small stand-up displays, objects scattered throughout. What catches your attention? What do you feel drawn to?
What happened to these books before? They almost burned in a fire started from vinyl and paper, Peter tells us, while we sit in his cozy but cold attic-turned-living-room-turned-performance-space. We are hungry for his stories of how he met Andreas, what kind of person he was. This is what we wonder while we wander the corridors of that little box full of boxes that is the library. When it was itself still wandering, the library was again threatened when a graffiti called for violent pyromanic actions against gentrification places, such as the gallery where the library had traveled to for the time being – Mara tells us sitting in the midst of the collection, feeding us slowly with answers to our ravenous questions.
He was a memorizer, they say, his memories now contained and put in order. All that stuff is sorted, but the abundance, the mess, the cracks, the undergrowth remain.
The landscape as library
Week 1: We walked down from the crest and followed the surrounding paths. First into the unknown, with an open mind. Keeping an eye out and absorbing where the first steps took us. What we found: Animals, signs, wild herbs, cheese vending machines, tracks, stacks of wood, people, sights, smells, sounds and encounters. In this first period, walking was an activity in itself, without a purpose, simply heading off into the blue.
Week 2: Then a purpose for our walks was sought for, was found or emerged on its own. A dance performance in Trogen, a place to pick thyme for herbal tea, a visit to the Brockenhaus in Oberegg at a certain time. The passage was provided with prepositions. To and Towards and In Order To were added. We familiarized
ourselves with the place, became knowledgeable of it.
Week 3: Step by step, stack by stack, we sorted, categorized and documented. Repetition became a consciously chosen principle: the photo of the same valley each day, a familiar route to get some air. Patterns emerged through repetition and series were created. The self-set tracks were followed. The tracks of Andreas
and his relations to our surroundings.
Week 4: The patterns bring us back to the beginning. We want to lose ourselves again, to be guided by intuition. No more plans, just go for it and perceive anew. But is that still possible when you are already familiar with your surroundings? The trails we walked left traces. We take pleasure in tracing lines of thought, in finding connection lines, in drawing an outline. We observe how we seek order and templates ourselves, just to feel the urge to break them again.
Text: Maike Suhr, Hanna Döring, Freia Kuper
(hinterlands magazine editorial team)
November 2023
As we approach the library of Andreas Züst, browsing through its massive repository of heterogeneous knowledge, we are confronted with the sheer otherness that surrounds us, with its ocean-like vastness. Something similar to what the legend reads: “Hopelessly inspired in the Labyrinth of the Bibliothek?”. However, to get lost in our own labyrinthic paths was only part of our intention: for this whole month, we shared these experiences with an opposite kind of archive, humanity’s newly found and widely controversial companion, the general purpose AI language model Chat GPT.
This AI language model reacted to our questions, descriptions and impressions of the library in a way that allowed us to rethink its current organization, as well as the ideas regarding our own project and exploring of the Andreas Züst’s archive. In contrast to the library of Babel imagined by Jorge Luis Borges, in which the library represents an infinite and chaotic collection of all possible knowledge, we cannot get lost in the prompt-answer structure of intelligent artificial communication. It is a space with no extension. However, when prompted with the right inputs (descriptions of the library’s space and books, for instance), the AI language model was able to participate in our reading experience, serving as a digital compass for this particular labyrinth. This allowed us, also, to dehumanize this intelligence, reminding us that exploring an archive still remains an eminently human task.
Without dismissing the technical feat achieved in the language model, we present our interactions with Chat GPT, alias G., through a media work that visualizes the human and machine-generated text into a space of meaning, where distances and paths are defined by computational measures similar to the ones that originated G.’s answers in the first place. With this, we attempt to recover the diachronic reading experience of the physical library, where the archival, alphabetic organization is always subverted by the curiosity-driven exploration and serendipitous findings.
Text: Baltazar Pérez, Pia Pachinger, Simón López Trujillo
May 2023
I spent a month in an observatory of change. On the top of the forest, the library sees: snow rain, and light, falling on the adjacent trees. The trees show up in, and on, our screens. The various-in-size screens are moved across the building, taken from the rooms to the desks to the shared spaces. A red kite glides by. I’m told they’re common in Zürich. Also there. The hands, are touching the screens_the books_the glasses_the coffee cups. At dusk, the main window looks just like a big blue screen. Branches on grey skies, on blue skies and the dropper cables, are happy or sad. Winter is not ending. I spend the night with a robot at Sitterwerk, where all books can touch, where all ideas can touch. The books are rearranged frankly. I look at lines by Dubuffet and Sophie Taeuber-Arp. In other books. At lines used to illustrate writing about asemic writing. I see quite some lines. A photograph of a work by Roman Signer suggests the possibility of bringing together two remote places, Säntis und Bodensee. The window frost is melting. The group smokes cigarets. Every day. Breakfast together.The kite flies by, every day. Like they do in Zürich. An old project about time-space synesthesia resurfaces. I ask them to make sketches on A4s. How do you see the calendar? Is it in front of you or is it around you? The month pass by. We enter, sit and leave the library. I am intensely surveying the circulation of the space within itself within myself.
The library as a hypnotist is a project that opens spaces in the Bibliothek Andreas Züst. I spent four weeks collecting and associating images taken in and outside the library. The photographs are used as a material and together they form a space. Each space is printed and becomes a 24 pages publication, big format. I call them immersive spaces. The four publications take different directions and assume temporary names: taking a line for a walk, extramental in the woods, a mountain melting in a lake, longing for smoking.
During the residency, I initiate a collaboration with a hypnotherapist around the possibility of visiting my immersive spaces. We’re trying it out. It’s the first time. We end up visiting two. I’ll do it again.
Johanna Himmelsbach is a graphic designer and artist based in Amsterdam. Her editorial practice is informed by spatiality—both physical and mind spaces, and explores how they visually come together. While she considers ‘image editing’ as a craft and a subject in itself, she mediates on the notion of image as a feeling, a ‘visual idea’ that travels through space and across mediums.
Visuals from extramental in the woods (working title), publication, 24 pages, 325×460 mm, Bibliothek Andreas Züst, 2023
Text: Johanna Himmelsbach
April 2023
During the one-month stay at the Alpenhof Anthonie de Groot and Gianna Rovere explored different ways of working together. For example on walks, with commenting on each other’s writing, with audio, image-search, collages or writing letters. In all these experiments they were interested in each other’s working methods; in how they research, link and spin on. Coming from different disciplines, it was in language, in text, where they met. They used the Library of Andreas Züst for research. They gave themselves the notion of «longing» as a starting point, as a feeling that should guide their research. As a feeling that keeps coming up, describing gaps and voids; what is missing and what one longs for. From the research and reflection, a collection has emerged, which is built as a dialogue. They call it their «database», which they will take further on to continue working on other projects.
Excerpt from the «database»:
Keywords:
1. New beginning
(No reset, no forgetting, but also no too strenuous «referencing».)
(Deliberately avoiding discourses and contexts.)
Yes, but I like discourse and making connections.
2. Walks
3. Ways
(Bumpy and steep, smooth and gentle. Eyes on it or just on the side of the path, where we gather in thought and observe, forget some things and yet remember others when we come back from the same walk and tell each other about it.)
It is like reading without concentration. The not conscious reading, where the thoughts are completely elsewhere and I could not repeat what the last lines were.
(Or the moment when one has actually already fallen asleep while reading. Dreaming creeps into the reading movement and only becomes noticeable when it ventures too far away from reality.)
Idea for method: Late in the evening, with tired eyes and heavy hand.
4. Not being concrete
5. Not thinking about the goal
(I seal the target in a glass ball and put a cork on it. Slowly, the steam of habit builds up in it, so that the view of the target from the outside is not quite as clear as it was at the beginning, and the temptation to break the glass and take the target is not quite as great.)
We have already talked about the physical. Warn me before you take the hammer because you can’t take it anymore.
(Maybe I have to take the hammer, weigh it in my hand, feel the weight, the violence, in order to be able to put it back into the toolbox unused?)
Yes, or use it once briefly, not with full force, but just so lightly, to give a little satisfaction to the desire.
6. Not thinking about the actual thing
(Not thinking about it, that you might think about it, that what you don’t think about might become the focus.)
Does that perhaps also mean that what we are doing here is a wrong approach? Maybe we also forget for a day why we are actually here.
(I imagine that would be nice! But do you think we can actually forget why we are here?)
By cleaning for a whole day and drinking beer, maybe. Then it’s already two days when the next one is a hangover day.
7. Casually
(By the way while running.)
(By the way, listening.)
(Looking past.)
8. Collecting
(It burns under my fingers. Want to hide my restless greedy look.)
Or you get involved with this «method». I mean, we’re talking about taking the focus away, from the in-between. Let’s collect and document but in the process, fill our database, and then think about the «point of interest».
(I think writing about restlessness is a way to engage myself in the method. Because when I write about it, I take the wind out of it.)
Not writing about restlessness, but writing restlessly?
9. Productivity in not being productive
10. Database
(Stone bench, showcase.)
A book, haha.
(A book about stone benches, locked behind glass and only to be looked at with a key and white gloves.)
11. Archive
12. Document
13. Record
The challenge in the whole endeavor begins to emerge:
How to look at the gap when there is nothing in place for a gap to form?
(How to understand the thought processes of the other person and understand and respond to and use our different approaches?)
Text: Anthonie de Groot, Gianna Rovere
April 2023
