Andersrum [vice versa]

The graphic novel with a total of forty-eight pages portrays an imaginary walk through thirteen exhibition halls of the museum. In each hall, there is an exhibit or a group of objects that carries the readers or visitors off into different worlds for the duration of a three- to five-page long episode. The stories are not based on the official object descriptions; through their fictional character, they rather open up an alternative dimension. Despite the literary access, each new narrative is preceded by an intensive research activity in cooperation with the curators of the various collection areas. Besides the specialist consultation, research of the recommended literature and repository visits, the personal discussions with the curators, thanks to their different epistemic and personal accesses, made an inestimable contribution to complexes of topics emerging around every object that extended into the inconclusive, subjective terrain beyond the state of research.

Each comic episode is a stand-alone story that picks up a motive or a question of the contemporary cultural anthropology: topics such as collection practice, restitution, tourism as well as private art experience, kitsch and nostalgia.

The project was funded by the kültüřgemma! initiative supported by the city of Vienna. The printing costs of one edition of four thousand copies were borne by the Weltmuseum Wien; moreover, the author was provided her own studio in the premises of the Weltmuseum Wien.