Geisters
Geisters or Vice Versa is an artistic project in public space by the Kosovar artist Driton Selmani. It accompanies his first solo-exhibition in Austria, which is currently on view at Kahan Art Space Vienna (Große Sperlgasse 37/Große Pfarrgasse 7) until August 27, 2023.
Geisters or Vice Versa (2019/2023) reflects on the complexity and gaps between time, memory and place. The clothes (coats and hoodies) in the photographs, taken by the artist, belong to Mr Ismail (b. 1944 in Kosovo), a family relative of the artist. Mr Ismail randomly positioned them as scarecrows throughout his vegetable garden in his native village Doganaj (Kosovo), after returning back home from Gstaad (Switzerland) and Paznaun-Ischgl (Austria), where he lived for the past 45 years.
Mr Ismail's scarecrows, designed to frighten predatory birds, represent or rather document the physical and mental journey of his “Gastarbeiter” migration history from his native village to the West and, after decades, back home.1 While adapting to the foreign environment, Mr Ismail struggled financially to secure a living, including buying new clothes. Now the same coverings serve as ghost artefacts, self-made monuments of his economic status and fashion taste, of his endurance; remembrances of his past life in a home away from home.
The artistic interventions are positioned on advertising surfaces in the five following locations in Vienna:
1 Duration is ineffable, it cannot be apprehended by the rational intellect or conceptual understanding, and only be shown indirectly through images that can never reveal a complete picture. It can only be grasped through a simple intuition of the imagination. Henri Bergson, The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics, 1934.
