Memory imprint

With its almost two hundred years of history, the Franzensfeste Fortress is a special place of remembrance. We find traces everywhere: drawings, scribbles, numbers, tally lists, individual letters and symbols on the peeling walls, scratched into the red brick or engraved in the stone. How can we read, understand or even interpret these traces? Were they mostly created by former soldiers, who spent weeks and months here and expressed their innermost desires and immortalised their secret messages out of boredom, fear or longing? What do these traces seek to tell us?

Petra Polli and Werner Gasser have on invitation from the Museum worked intensely with the theme of Traces and are now displaying works created for the special Memory Imprint exhibition along with existing works, which take on a new interpretation within the context of the Fortress.

Curated by Esther Erlacher
Photos: Ivo Corrà