Magda Drozd & Michael Höpfner: Stay with Me

Stay with Me. The Mountain as a Space of Resonance, curated by Andrea Lerda, is open at Museomontagna since Sunday March 31, 2024. The exhibition, an unprecedented production part of the Museum’s Sustainability Programme, brings together the work of Viennese walking artist Michael Höpfner and Zurich-based sound artist Magda Drozd.

Stay with Me is realized with the support of the Città di Torino, Regione Piemonte, Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo, Camera di Commercio di Torino, Phileas—The Austrian Office for Contemporary Art (Vienna), Austria’s Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, the Civil Service and Sport, Kultur Niederösterreich, the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, the Elisabeth Jenny Foudation (Riehen).

Taking its cue from the book Resonance. A Sociology of Our Relationship to the World, by German sociologist Hartmut Rosa, the exhibition explores the concept of resonance. Not in the sense of total harmony but as a dynamic relationship wherein subject and world touch each other to stimulate vibrancy and mutual transformation.

Resonating—from the Latin “re-sonare”—involves entering a deep metaphysical dimension where simplicity, attention and disenchantment are the essential prerequisites of a different way of experiencing present time. With resonance, subject and cosmos communicate using their own “voices”. They “touch” each other to stimulate vibrancy and mutual transformation. As a result, the nature of this relationship drives the quality of the appropriation of the world and the happiness levels of human existence.

As argued by the philosopher Paolo Costa, being-in-touch with this place enables us to embark on a slow and intimate process of metamorphosis, cleansing ourselves of the excess of materialism, stimuli and conditioning that inhabit the human existence, and returning to a state of fullness and knowing. This is when a genuine experience of resonance “leaves a profound mark on us. It enters into tension with our strong opinions, our priorities, our sense of what is really important and what is far less so, and with what saves us from a life adrift and gives us access to the less visible parts of ourselves and the world we live in.”

Subverting the traditional image of the mountains and suggesting a shift from their contemplation to a speculative approach, Stay with Me. The Mountain as a Space of Resonance reinterprets resonance as an opportunity to change.

Magda Drozd and Michael Höpfner open themselves up to a new relationship with what is fleeting and incomprehensible around us and interpret our relationship with the mountains from an abstract perspective as they seek to perceive the reality that lies beyond intelligible and rational fact. Conceived as a single large immersive intervention wherein visual and sound dimensions merge in a relationship of mutual signification, the works interact with our conscious and subconscious dimensions. Body and mind are accompanied along a path of “listening” and “discovery”, freeing up the senses to travel around the infinite particles of a vibrant reality.

Stay with Me. The Mountain as a Space of Resonance is the starting point of a broader project entitled  Stay with Me I A Whole Growing Exhibition, curated by Andrea Lerda, which will take shape late in 2023 and throughout 2024 with the backing of the Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo. The initiative will explore walking from a multifocal perspective and by way of a number of public events. The months-long exploration of this concept will come together in an exhibition entitled A Walking Mountain, to be presented in November 2024.

All events part of the programme are published on the museum’s website. 
Press contact: stampa.pr [​at​] museomontagna.org