sundays at 11

EXCURSIONS

Excursions, the joint project between Michaela Melián and Frank Heer, is published in the context of the series Pair Skating - between art and literature, which has been organized since 2002 by the Swiss art magazine Kunstbulletin. This project series brings visual arts and literature into discussion together on different platforms. 

Excursions depicts in snapshots the journey of two people from anywhere to nowhere. In her art installations Michaela Melián develops complex reference systems and fields of memory, and is currently a guest with her solo exhibition Speicher at the Lentos Art Museum Linz. The Kunstbulletin contribution developed together with the Zurich author Frank Heer and the associated events are part of Extra Europe Switzerland, an exchange and cooperation program of the Swiss cultural foundation Pro Helvetia with Linz Capital of Culture 2009. The project was implemented in collaboration with the House of Literature of Zurich. In Zurich, the corresponding event will take place on 4 May, at 8 pm.
 
A jointly developed text-photo spread will be presented in Kunstbulletin 5/09.

www.literaturhaus.ch
www.kunstbulletin.ch

We have a long similar history of socialization through music,
through our involvement in bands and the related discourses.
Frank Heer's novel "Flammender Grund" can be described as a road movie,
in which the protagonist travels all the way from Switzerland to the United States
but then really gets stuck there, or arrives at himself and his abysmal depths, or really just moves in a loop.

In my current work Speicher, as well as in several previous works (e.g. "Strasse", "Panorama", "Triangel"), the theme of traveling is always a fundamental idea, a method of orbiting around themes, following different threads.
Much of my work is based on the principle of repetition, of circling, of the loop.
Michaela Melián about the similarities between her work and Frank Heer’s.

Michaela Melián (born 1956), artist and musician in the band F.S.K., lives in Upper Bavaria.
She teaches at the ETH Zurich, Dep. Art and Architecture. For the sound-slide installation
Föhrenwald she received the Radio-Drama-Award of the "Kriegsblinden" in 2006. Currently: Speicher, Koenig Books, London. © ProLitteris Zurich
www.galerie-karin-guenther.de
www.barbaragross.de

Frank Heer (born 1966) is a writer, travel journalist and musician with the New York bands Melomane  and C. Gibbs, lives in Zurich. With Bingo Palace, Whistle Me Higher, he composed the soundtrack for his novel Flammender Grund, Hofmann & Campe.
www.myspace.com/frankheer
Extra Europe Switzerland, Swiss cultural foundation Pro Helvetia www.prohelvetia.ch / extra Europe