High‐Tech Heimat: Mountains and Mediation in Literature, Film, and Digital Art. (26th April 2019) - Beals, Kurt
Abstract : The ideal of an alpine Heimat is frequently taken to exclude mediation in favor of direct, un‐mediated experience. Yet works of Heimatliteratur and Heimatfilm are often concerned with questions of mediation. The works discussed in this essay pay special attention to the role of mediation in the destruction or reconstruction of the integral, traditional forms of community or geographical identity associated with this notion of Heimat . The first section considers short stories by the Swiss writer Regina Ullmann in which media prove an inadequate substitute for immediate human contact. The second analyzes the 1957 film Hoch droben auf dem Berg as an argument for the productive function of television in reconstituting traditional community. The third turns to digital works by the Swiss artists Monica Studer and Christoph van den Berg that frame alpine idylls as highly mediated constructions. Unlike Ullmann's stories, these more recent works reveal mediation as essential to the construction of Heimat .