When I arrived at the library, I needed to disconnect. I was in desperate need of time and calm. I was coming out of a period of intense and frantic work.
But I was writing. I was writing a text about glaciers and algae, about the opacity of bodies and invisibility. About abandonment as a practice of care.
But I was tired. I was very tired, and my head was full. I thought even that place was too much for me. I thought I wouldn’t be able to put words together anywhere, such was the confusion and the sheer volume of things in my mind.

I spent the first days wandering through the corridors, between shelves stacked to the ceiling with books. But I was so overwhelmed that I couldn’t even read the titles. I was searching—searching for bibliographic clues and references for my text. But I couldn’t find anything. I was blind to everything around me.

Until I let it all go.
Even though it was the middle of summer, it rained for several days in a row, and I didn’t go outside for more than three consecutive days. I hated the weather. But the weather gave me the time I needed. It gave me a boundary. And I found the emptiness again.

The emptiness of the rooms I inhabited flooded me. The silence surrounding me seeped into me. The stillness of the landscape allowed the tension—this tension that kept me from staying still in the same place or position for more than a few minutes—to melt away.

And I stopped searching.
Stopped thinking that I had to search, that I had to write.
And I started to breathe.
And to write.
And to encounter books.

Not the ones I had in mind.
Not the ones I was looking for.
No references I could actually use to write the text, even though there were many interesting books on similar topics.
But books that showed me the gaze with which I needed to look at the work I was doing. From what position to observe it. And how much lightness to bring into it.

I began to see again, to look around.
The small shifts in the landscape—a fawn, a hawk, the changing green of the meadow—taught me the importance of paying attention, in stillness, to small things in my work. The changing sky taught me to pause, and to give value to the nuances of my making.

*****

On Invisibility is a text that originates from a reflection on the slow and progressive disappearance of glaciers which, melting day after day, year after year, create a void in the landscape—a void that is mirrored in the collective identity of the communities inhabiting the same territory. It begins by attempting to think, together with Astrida Neimanis, of glaciers as bodies of water—vast aquatic bodies that, as part of a system of planetary connections and interconnections, interact with, contaminate, and are shaped by the living and non-living beings they come into contact with.

Starting from the observation of the spaces left behind by the retreat of glaciers and the consequences this movement has on the countless relationships of which the glacier is a part, the gaze progressively shifts toward much smaller bodies of water, whose emergence results from the same series of factors that are leading to the disappearance of the ice giants.

Following the narrative that describes a progressive re-greening of the Alps and mountain areas in general, the text attempts to question what it truly means to “become forest,” and what ethical implications this perspective on the landscape entails. It asks what it means—both practically and ethically—to move from perceiving a landscape as a barren, unusable desert to seeing it as something that can be exploited.

The second half of the text focuses on algae from the Hydrurus foetidus family, recently discovered and now subject of growing scientific interest and study.

Starting from the right to opacity theorized by Édouard Glissant as a fundamental precondition for entering into relation with the Other, and passing through the history of marginalized communities that have made invisibility a practice of resistance, the text attempts to theorize a right to invisibility for non-human beings— one that protects them from extractivist and capitalizing gazes.

Through the act of abandonment as a practice of com-pensation and respons-ability, the text seeks to imagine, alongside a group of transfeminist scholars, a positioning that emphasizes the with in relationships —a being-with the world in order to be in the world.

August 2025
Text + Fotos: Caterina Giansiracusa

“I just wanted some silence.

Instead, everything has become louder and louder.”

During their six-week residency, weather forecast immersed themselves in the many weathers of grief. Each day they wrote – together and alone, with their bodies, through emotion and in response to the shifting atmospheres.

They see talk about the weather not as a superficial conversation filler, but as a way of staying with. Their approach is shaped by affect theory, queer and crip theory and literary texts. The weather also formed the starting point for their somatic writing practice at Alpenhof: books on weather forecasting in the Bibliothek Andreas Züst, unpredictable rain, storms, heat, briefly appearing double rainbows, passing clouds, and the sense of time held in fog became vessels for writing about feelings and for developing spaces in which grief could be shared.

Towards the end of the residency, weather forecast held a small workshop with fellow residents, which was precious and helpful as feedback. They will continue to develop the methods for collaborative somatic writing that emerged from the stay, and share them in workshops – such as the course sharing words, which they will host in November 2025 at the Bachelor K++V at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts.

September 2025
Text + Fotos: weather forecast

Das Projekt “Exorbitant” von Sophia Leitenmayer und Carlos León Zambrano dreht sich um den Abschied von den Wettersatelliten NOAA-15, -18 und -19, die alle während den Wochen ihres Aufenthalts in der Bibliothek Andreas Züst abgeschaltet wurden. Sie haben die letzten Signale empfangen, arbeiten mit den Satellitengeräuschen, Field Recordings und Recherchen zu Wetterphänomenen, sowie Weltraummüll und denken spekulativ über den Transfer in den Friedhofsorbit nach.

Die Wettersatelliten im Ruhestand, deren letzte Signale das Duo zu Schlafliedern für Kühe umwandelt und zu Bildern decodiert, sind die Hauptprotagonisten. Die Bibliothek wird als Observatorium inszeniert und als Wetter- und Radiostation interpretiert und die Archivarbeiten, nebst selbstgebauter Regenschirmantennen werden an verschiedenen Stellen im und am Gebäude installiert. Die gesammelten decodierten Daten werden in Form einer vauukumierten Objekt-Serie aus Drucken auf Thermopapier und Fragmenten der Residenz experimentell umgesetzt. Parallel gibt es einen Katalog, der diese Bilder mit Visualisierungen der Sounds und narrativen Fußnoten als Kettenreaktion von Handlungen und humoristischer Spekulation aus den Büchern der Bibliothek vereint. Dazu entsteht eine cinematisch-hypnotische Mehrkanal-Klanginstallation, die in und auf dem Dach der Bibliothek performativ uraufgeführt wird und schließlich als Loop Kassetten-Reihe dort verbleibt.

Appendix: In Oberegg ist das Mensch-Kuh-Verhältnis 10:7. Manche Kühe richten sich wie erdnahe orbitale Satelliten zur meteorologischen Wetteraufzeichnung nach dem magnetischen Nordpol der Erde. Satellitengestützte Naturbeobachtungen und Feldforschungen zeigen, dass sie sich möglicherweise nach ihrem inneren Kompass zum Ruhen und Schlafen ausrichten.

*****

The project ‘Exorbitant’ by Sophia Leitenmayer and Carlos León Zambrano revolves around the farewell to the weather satellites NOAA-15, -18 and -19, all of which were shut down during their weeks in the Andreas Züst Library. They received the last signals, work with satellite noises, field recordings and research on weather phenomena and space debris, and speculate on the transfer to the graveyard orbit.

The retired weather satellites, whose last signals the duo converts into lullabies for cows and decodes into images, are the main protagonists. The library is staged as an observatory and interpreted as a weather and radio station, and the archive works, along with homemade umbrella antennas, are installed at various locations in and around the building. The collected decoded data is experimentally implemented in the form of a vacuum-packed series of objects consisting of prints on thermal paper and fragments of the residence. In parallel, there is a catalogue that combines these images with visualisations of the sounds and narrative footnotes as a chain reaction of actions and humorous speculation from the books in the library. In addition, a cinematic, hypnotic multi-channel sound installation is being created, which will be performed for the first time in and on the roof of the library and will ultimately remain there as a loop cassette series.

Appendix: In Oberegg, the human-cow ratio is 10:7. Some cows, like low-orbit satellites, align themselves with the Earth’s magnetic north pole for meteorological weather recording. Satellite-based nature observations and field research show that they may align themselves with their internal compass for resting and sleeping.

August 2025
Text+Fotos: Sophia Leitenmayer & Carlos León Zambrano

Note 1
Sociologist Max Weber refused treatment at Swiss resorts. He was going through a mental crisis and found the mountain landscape “too dramatic”. However, the scenery at Alpenhof is more reminiscent of a romantic comedy than a drama; as the sunrise comes, the wind forgets the secrets of the night.

Note 2
There are four of us—artists assigned female at birth—who have come to Alpenhof this autumn of 2024. The study of people is no less emotional than the study of books. Yet, amateur anthropologists like myself must always remain attentive to their own emotions.

Note 3
The library unfolds through playful experiences. The games offered by the shelves include: spotting the first book you see, freestyle browsing, journeying among topics. But the potential players are the most fun. We exchange books and allow each other to cross the boundaries of our interests.

Note 4
Scholar Giuliana Bruno describes the phenomenon of Baroque allegorical maps (circa the 17th century) coming alongside the social needs of emotional discourse. She notes that these maps seem like early feminist board games, served to cultivate societal openness and vulnerability.

Note 5
Melancholy is social, melancholy is female, melancholy is terrestrial.
She lies between inspiration and apathy, like the Land of Emotions.
My friend asks, “Is it depression?” No, my dear, it is a landscape.

Note 6
The short warm period in October is called the same in both Russian and German: the summer of older ladies. Lovely.

Note 8
Some of the toponyms on the Map of Melancholy—Sensitivity, Nervousness, Burnout, Fatigue, Overstrain, Spleen, Boredom, Insomnia, Horror, Confusion, Depression, and Acedia—are taken from Karin Johannisson’s book Spaces of Melancholy.

Note 9
Frankly, I have problems defining emotions. They go beyond language. Perhaps that’s why I build a map of melancholy using books as associations. So many new feelings have arrived nowadays, and I’m still barely dealing with the oldest ones.

Note 10
Got a crush. A photo of a crashed car from the book 100 Notfallsituationen und lebensrettende Massnahmen was the first thing I noticed. This book is an empathy test and it seems I failed it.

Note 11
Alexandra Kollontai, a Russian revolutionary and ideologist of free love, writes to her lover:
“I want to know that you are happy. Our relationship is strange! We could be ‘des bons camarades,’ and you know it—I have a lot of ‘good’ warmth for you, really. That’s why I suggest you remember me even when you don’t have time for ‘women’. I shake your hand in a friendly manner.”

Note 12
Below the slope on which Alpenhof stands lies a valley that resembles an exemplary board game map. Beyond the valley, mountains rise, concealing from view all the land to the east.

Sara Culmann (she/any pronouns) is a visual artist based in Amsterdam. She works with video, animation, and games and creates associative narratives where technology, humans, and more-than-human beings influence one another politically and evolutionarily.

During her residency, she explored playable approaches to researching the library and created The Map of Melancholy, an installation in the form of tabletop game map, that presents a personal journey guided by books associated with the range of emotions. The map is inspired by the historical salon board game Carte de Tendre (1654-61), which depicts the thorny path of tenderness as envisioned by individuals of that era.

October 2024
Text + Fotos: Sara Culmann

I grew up in the catholic Alps. 1990s. Working-class family. There were no lesbians there, they didn’t exist. I’m not even sure if the word was part of my vocabulary. My queer awakening, often referred to as coming out, came much later. It probably would have happened sooner if I had had role models.

The lack of queer examples I describe is not just a biographical experience but a reflection of a societal system that excludes certain individuals from historical narratives. In my work, I engage with archives and the gaps they present regarding queer realities in the Alpine and rural areas.

What is a library if not an archive? In the Andreas Züst Library, I searched for these gaps to fill, rewrite or correct. I looked for codes and searched between the lines for lesbian semiotics. I wrote letters, mostly to people who are already gone. The letter, as a method of these additions, allows me to – in a speculative way – engage with those people rather than discuss them, while also addressing these narrative gaps collectively. In the obvious delay in response, absence is revealed – another blank space that must be borne. Yet it is precisely in these gaps that new realities may unfold.

The letters are printed on filigrane paper and have been activated through a reading at the open studio at the end of the residency. They will remain in some books in the library as an expansion of the collection.

October 2024
Text + Fotos Nr. 1-5 : Alizé Rose-May | Foto Nr. 6: Flavia Bienz

During Jiaxi Han’s residency, her creative process followed principles found in D.T. Suzuki’s books on Zen in the library, particularly the idea that Zen deals directly with reality—not with concepts, abstractions, or logic, and that Zen reveals truths in the most concrete forms, grasped through appearance and intuition.

Over the four weeks, Jiaxi Han gathered images from the books of crop circles, weather signs and diagrams, and patterns from the artist’s hometown Miao culture and local Appenzeller folk art and craft. Using ink on Chinese rice paper, she transformed these into about 150 small sketches. This approach which merges the medium from the artist’s traditional culture with patterns from different cultural backgrounds creates a visual dialogue.

The sketches evolved according to visual relationships—similarities, contrasts, and transformations—between images, much like the logic in the dream Freud described, where meaning is carried through visual connections rather than linguistic structures.

The artist also created short poems and practiced ensō during the residency. While the poems do not strictly follow the haiku form, they capture moments, people, and the surrounding nature with directness and immediacy.

Jiaxi Han’s residency work drew from various books spanning meteorology, UFOs, crop circles, ethnography, Zen, poetry, and ghost stories. She drifted naturally between these topics, drawing unexpected connections and envisioning new ways of narrating the library’s collections. The resulting sketches serve as groundwork for her future, larger works and provide a foundation for discussing specific discourses, greatly benefiting the artist’s ongoing practice.

Some of these sketches will be exhibited in Bacio Collective Bern in a group show from Nov 9 – Dec 8, 2024.

October 2024
Text + Fotos: Jiaxi Han

‘Mit Wolken gehen möchte ich wandern’ (I want to walk with clouds) is the title of the exhibition of paintings by Karl Uelliger at the Open Art Museum in St. Gallen (5.9.24-23.2.25). The motto fits in with the residency of walking artist Marie-Anne Lerjen, artist in residence in October 2024, who faced the weather on the same route (almost) every day. And this changes spectacularly on the St. Anton. In the spirit of sensuous geography, it was about immersing oneself in the place with all senses. What influence does the weather have on the walking body? How do the weather and the walking body interact? How does the weather affect the body? Working indoors with books, including weather observations from the Andreas Züst library, deepened the experience. The ongoing climate catastrophe, which will have a further impact on our weather, forms the backdrop to the exploration of the weather. On the occasion of the residencies’ open studios, Marie-Anne Lerjen invited to a group walk: ’Point of Weather. A Walk’ (24.10.24).

Marie-Anne Lerjen is a walking artist from Zurich (Switzerland). Since 2011 she has been working under the label of “lerjentours. Agency for Walking Culture”. Her interest is in walking as a method to gain embodied knowledge about places, spaces, things, and notions.

October 2024
Text: Marie-Anne Lerjen
Fotos: Marie-Anne Lerjen, Flavia Bienz

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