Stand Ort Wechsel

Open-air museums are the archives of change. They research, document and preserve testimonies to historical rural architecture and culture now rendered obsolete, and abandoned as a result. In the museum, houses now unwanted and facing the threat of demolition become a store for memories. That alters the buildings themselves, but also the places where they once stood. What has happened since at the original settlement site, following the change of location? What has taken the place of these erstwhile shelters, now that they have found a place in an open-air museum? What has filled the (empty) space once inhabited and now deserted? In their photographic quest for these traces Gertrud Fischbacher, Reinhart Mlineritsch, Andrew Phelps, Rudolf Strobl and Elisabeth Wörndl went in search of answers to these very questions. Using five houses at the Salzburg open-air museum as their starting point, they tracked down their former or current owners at their present-day location, approaching them with a degree of excitement, but also respect. In their moving photographs they have captured the traces left behind by change, on the houses themselves, their inhabitants, and their memories.