In-Progress: Strafsachen

2025, archival research, drawing, paper, pencil, crayon

A new reseach direction of my practice investigates the archival silence surrounding the persecution of homosexual individuals in Carinthia, Austria under National Socialism. The project is grounded in more than 35 unexamined criminal case files located in the Carinthian State Archives. These files—linked to §129 Ib Criminal Code, Unnatural Sexual Acts, document the criminalization of same-sex desire but have remained largely untouched within institutional memory.

Rather than reconstructing biographies or narratives, Strafsache explores the structural mechanisms of silencing and erasure embedded in the archive itself. The project employs the conceptual strategy of Redaction as Refusal, a practice in which original legal documents—typed reports, testimonies, and verdicts—are reproduced as large-format drawings and then subjected to dense, manual redaction using pastel pigment. Entire sections of text are deliberately obscured, leaving only bureaucratic structures and a few selected phrases visible: “unnatural relations,” “kissed,” “played with my genitals with [her] fingers.”

This visual strategy mirrors the violence of criminalization while rejecting the archive’s demand for legibility. Through this gesture of refusal, the work resists both historiographic closure and voyeuristic reading, transforming juridical language into an aesthetic surface marked by absence, materiality, and tension.

Detail view of working process.

Detailed view. This visual strategy highlights the tension between documentary source and artistic erasure.

Working process. The focus is on testing paper qualities, surface treatments, and drawing and manual techniques such as freehand transfer and tracing. Pencils and pastel crayons are used to examine line density, color effects, and layering.

Detailed view. The manual redaction of text using dense, impasto strokes, in which selected fragments—such as “kissed” or “played with my genitals with [her] fingers”—remain legible. This visual strategy highlights the tension between documentary source and artistic erasure.

Working process. The focus is on testing paper qualities, surface treatments, and drawing and manual techniques such as freehand transfer and tracing. Pencils and pastel crayons are used to examine line density, color effects, and layering.

Unsichtbar gemacht, doch die Lücken sprechen

2025, audio installation, mono, 29:33

Voices: Kristóf Gellén, Klara Mydia, Mika Janez Palmisano, Matthias Winkler und Brigitte

This audio installation (Eng. title: Made Invisible, but the gaps are speaking) confronts the archival silence surrounding the persecution of homosexuals in Carinthia. While the Landesarchiv Kärnten holds over 35 case files of persons prosecuted under §129 Ib of the Austrian Penal Code, only three of these have been systematically researched and made public — in stark contrast to efforts in cities like Berlin or Vienna. This absence highlights a broader neglect of queer histories within regional archival practices.

The installation gives voice to this gap by naming those who were accused, investigated, and persecuted in Carinthia. Inspired by the scene “Ancestors” from the Stadttheater Klagenfurt production QUEERinthia, the names are spoken by members of the cast with others — forming a sonic memorial that resists forgetting and calls for deeper recognition.

55 names are spoken in 5 min intervals.