Annen Street

2011, 25 strips, each 11 x 250 cm, direct printing on acryl glass

Nominated for Boesner Art Award, 2011

Economic processes and their spatial consequences are fluid and run over long periods of time. Only the passage of time makes them evident as they leave relict in urban spaces. In many places, hints of the traditional intra-urban shopping street remain visible only in the lettering of former shops.

Phantoms of a time before local retailers came under pressure by the more extensive and popular supply of international chains, online retail and the more varied demand of a pluralistic society. Julia Gaisbacher documents urban relics such as these. Via fragmentation and re-composition, she creates two portraits of an old shopping street, Annenstraße in Graz, in the course of time. But this barcode of inner-city transformation processes also documents the materiality of the subject – direct sheet printing on acrylic glass is a common practice in lettering building fronts.