Heimatkunde

It gives its name to the first artist’s book presented by Nicolò Degiorgis in view of his exhibition project Hämetli & Patriae, which opens next September. The exhibition will develop through a dialectical structure, which puts different concepts and qualities into dialogue, even if they contradict each other. But what will also be concretely connected will be places apparently far from contemporary art.

Heimatkunde is the first piece of this dialogue. The artist’s book is exhibited, in the form of an installation, at Museion Passage and in parallel at the Alexander Langer school in Bolzano. The volume is a re-edition of the original Heimatkunde notebook used by Nicolò Degiorgis himself in primary school. In this new edition it is designed to be an active work tool for schoolchildren. In fact, several classes at the Langer school will receive a copy of the book to create their own personalized Heimatkunde notebook.

In fact, the volume combines blank pages with the original, chromatic pages, which each student can compile in their own language and based on their own ideas and visions. If in the initial part you are invited to describe yourself, the vision then expands to your family, friends, class and therefore to the territory and the surrounding environment.

The book is an invitation to actively create a personalized, geographical and conceptual mapping, to build a personal and stratified vision of the “place” in which you live. The choice of school is not random: it represents a concrete example of a relationship between pupils from German and Italian schools, who, sharing the same school building, have the opportunity to interact. The artist’s book Heimatkunde is published by Rorhof.