On Stones, 2009, Georgia Creimer – press release


The competition

In February 2008 the merger of the Innsbruck University Library with the Tyrolean Provincial Library and the thus necessary erection of new premises (architects Eck, Reiter & Rossmann) resulted in the announcement of an art and construction competition by the regional government. Georgia Creimer, the Vienna-based artist who was born in Sao Paulo, won the competition for the artistic design of the ULB, the new University and Provincial Library.



Creimer convinced the jury members, Katharina Blaas, Karl Dürhammer, Gregor Eichinger, Arnold Klotz, Dietmar Rossmann and Eva Schlegel, with a concept that – in a close relationship with the architecture – refers to the constructional conditions and in varied ways condenses the communicative axes both within the building as well as towards its exterior.



The location

The library reconstruction in the basement of the university buildings on Innsbruck’s Blasius Hueber Straße has eight 9x3-metre glazed atria through which daylight shines into the interior rooms from above. Reading places for the visitors and offices of the employees are both grouped around the atria. The walkable library roof at the same time serves as an access level to the university building. Passers-by can look into the atria, lined by glass balustrades, from above. 

These atria were selected as locations for the art installation “On stones”. Three elements constitute the main focus and at the same time widely communicating elements of the installation: boulders placed in the courtyards, white rings assuming the form of the respective stone spread across the floor of the courtyards, as well as text quotes from a novel by Christoph Ransmayer, which are mounted on the glass balustrades.

The boulders

One of the boulders that the artist had found and selected in the area around Innsbruck in summer 2008 was placed in each of the courtyards. These stone giants, granite from the surrounding valleys, tip the scales at five to ten tonnes each.
 


“Stone”, says Creimer, “might also be understood as ‘condensed information’, millions of years of the earth’s history are saved in it. Thus it becomes the metaphor of the library and its spatial concentration of books, which might be understood for its part as a store of condensed wisdom.”



The raw, untreated stones used by Creimer bring a piece of nature into the building’s interior, as if contrasting with the architecture. Furthermore, they also serve to help the viewers’ localisation in the ULB in the sense of identity-creating elements from the region of Tyrol. If you look up from your reading and into one of the atria, you are reminded of where you are.



The rings

Around each stone, rings cut from aluminium sheet and varnished in a light-reflecting white structure the floor of each of the atrium courtyards, assuming the form of the stone’s outline and radiating it outwards in concentric lines. 


On the one hand, associations with the language of comics are thus created: in the graphics of comics strong concentric lines or stripes are often used in order to emphasise the drawn figure, to increase the readers’ concentration on it or to represent an emotion. 



On the other hand, there is an inevitable reference to the Zen gardens of ancient Japan, in which the familiar sand-reliefs symbolising water are employed and drawn with a rake in concentric circles around the stones. Similar to these, the library courtyards also now become concentrated locations for the users’ contemplation.



The script

Along the glass balustrades of each of the eight courtyards, Georgia Creimer quotes parts of a text from Christoph Ransmayer’s novel “Der Fliegende Berg”. Creimer’s extract concerns the ability, available to anyone who can read and write, to overcome time and space.



The text in the author’s handwriting, applied in white, stretches over all eight glass balustrades, connects them and thus on the library’s roof, where students and passers-by walk, relates to the area below.



Georgia Creimer on her installation at the Innsbruck ULB 

“The central idea of my project was to create a connection between the underground interior of the library and the exterior public space that is also visible for passers-by and people of the city of Innsbruck in the entrance area of the university, the library roof.



A sort of “landscape” is created on the ground of each atrium. Seen from inside the library it is intended to aid readers’ concentration. Through the position of the varied stones and the corresponding “rings” on the floor, the individual atria become defined locations, spatial identities within the larger area of the library. If you were making a date, for example, you could say, “Let’s meet at the flat stone.”



Above, on the library roof, the entrance to the university building, you are reminded where you are by the text on the glass balustrades: at a place of the script, of the book, of knowledge. The atria, which can be seen into from above, show the viewer the same “landscapes”, but this time from a sort of bird’s-eye view, making them appear more abstract, more flat, more graphic. 



Standing there and again looking far up into the distance you then see the real mountains, huge, far away and at the same time very close. Maybe for a split second, reality has been suspended. What can be seen outside and above in abundance is now suddenly inside and in the interior. And conversely, whatever overflows the space underneath and within in the form of script, is now above and outside, at the same time liberated and creating identity.



Visitors and users of the university premises have the chance to “decipher” the text on the glass balustrades by looking for its continuation on the next one. However, the installation also works without deciphering the text completely. The words and parts of the sentences have a poetic effect as such and ultimately exercise the power of the visual element. 



In contrast to the concentrated situation of the library, where the search for information is organised and made as easy as possible, the situation on the panel is more scattered. You move while you read; it is as if you read with your own body.”