Dorit Margreiter Choy
*1967 (Austria)
education: Universität für angewandte Kunst, Vídeň
lives and works in Vienna
Dorit Margreiter Choy has been active in the Austrian and international art scene since the early 1990s. She is part of a strong generation of Austrian artists (Mathias Poledna, Martin Beck, Florian Pumhösl) that, in the 1990s, reflected on recent history and questioned the social and political significance of modernism in their works. For Dorit Margreiter Choy, an important theme is modern architecture, its history, decline, and the preservation of its memory. Through aesthetically compelling film images, photographs, and object installations, she tells stories of abandoned places, disappearing buildings, or transforming landscapes, often leaving humans in the background merely as the implied architects of these changes.
Silber
The film “Silber“ (“Silver”) shows a superimposition of abstract landscape shots from the south of Iceland and Schwaz in Tyrol. The camera follows cuboid ice sheets that break off from the Vatnajökull glacier, slide into the valley and collect on a black lava beach. The slowly melting ice reveals a sculptural beauty, but also presents itself as a real-time record of climate change. Over this scene of flowing matter, images from Schwaz in Tyrol, a central location in European silver mining, are superimposed. Around 1520 approximately 50,000 people were employed there. The Tyrolean sovereign Sigmund had his own coins produced and increased production for international export. The silver thaler thus became a global means of payment. The Habsburgs, in turn, increasingly leased their rights to mine and sell the silver they extracted to private entrepreneurs like the Fuggers. At the same time, it became common for entrepreneurs and traders to sell unmined metal for bills of exchange or cash – trading in what today characterizes our stock markets as derivatives began. Large boulders riddled with silver veins inside the mine in Schwaz and abstract rock formations overlay the shots of the melting Icelandic glacier. In their sculptural presence they resemble ice cubes and condense them into an abstract image that represents the effects of the capital-controlled Anthropocene.
The film serves as a timeline that spans from the beginning of the invention of capital to its end taking two MOMENTS of history that take the form of MONUMENTS, one in its eternity (rocks of a mine) and the other one – though monumental – changing its form in real time.
A mobile that is comprised of lower case letters that spell the word “passage” can be seen as both – a moving image and a sculpture. “passage” can be read as Benjamin´s thoughts on passages in which the “flaneur” enacted an urban area. Or as someone passing time and /or space. The material of the letters is reminiscent of the former shopping center “Prior” in Olomouc´s city center which has undergone several transformations and thus serves as a document of history and how we look at it.
The original Prior letters serve as original documents of the past as well as stand ins of a description of history.
The project was produced in collaboration with Phileas – The Austrian Office for Contemporary Art.