As a city dweller, I cultivate an urban fanaticism that no rural experience has been able to break. The city is breath, awakening, freedom, civilisation. Not the countryside. At least for me. That is the ideological starting point. Nevertheless, I would like to use my stay in Ebensee to convince myself of the opposite. To understand why you live in a place – not just for the summer – that is known for having only old people, for dying. Why do you live here? What keeps you here? What is it? Why don’t you move from a dead place, as is the trend?
a Before – Between – After
In the Before I will explain my point of view, why I cultivate my urban fanaticism, my short manifesto of reservations. In the “in-between” I want to record my “explorations” on site, with conversations with the locals, and answer the main question: why do they live here? What keeps them in this place?
In the “afterwards” I want to take stock of a) the extent to which my attitude has changed b) the extent to which I have changed. Could this Ebensee, which has a few endearing points for me due to its defence history, even convert me into a country girl?
If there is a possibility, I would probably try to accompany my “in-between” photographically with small Polaroid photos. Things that catch my eye and self-indulgent selfies that document my decline in the provincial air – or, on the contrary, my awakening and rebirth as a rural cheerful creature.
20/09/24 → Rail Tour Reading
12/01/2025 → deutschlandfunk.de
What happens when a self-confessed, even fanatical city dweller undertakes a self-experiment in the Austrian provinces? Certainly not a chapter from the many “How I found my true life in the country” chronicles!
Solmaz Khorsand is a journalist, author and podcaster. She has worked for the newspaper Zeit, derstandard.at, the Wiener Zeitung and the magazine Republik, among others. Her book “Pathos” was published in 2021 and her current book “untertan. Von braven und rebellischen Lemmingen”. She also took part in the Artist in Residence programme of the Salzkammergut Capital of Culture.
Salt Lake Cities
Regional empty spaces as places of experience and meeting points for art: the Capital of Culture 2024 invites young artists from Germany and abroad to research, live and work in these spaces and to activate them with artistic contributions.
More about the project at salzkammergut-2024.at
