For centuries, the magic spell of ownership has succeeded at transforming forests, mountains, valleys, and access points to lakes into exclusive possessions. One such ‘possessed’ landscape is the Koralpe mountain range, in the depths of which lies one of the EU’s largest lithium deposits. Privatized for the symbolic price of one shilling, its mining rights now belong to a US-American/Australian mining group that hopes to process the light metal in Saudi Arabia and market it to the world as ‘European Lithium.’

The group exhibition Possessed Mountains takes the mountain range—which has been hollowed out legally, symbolically, and materially—as an occasion to interrogate property and landscapes in times of planetary and neocolonial extraction. Why are individuals or corporations allowed to own mountains (and their treasures) in the first place? What symbolic, legal, and material forms of proprietary possession exist? How can landscapes be emancipated from the curse of ownership?

Curation: Rose-Anne Gush, Philipp Sattler, Johanna Pichlbauer, Robin Klengel
Artists: Marwa Arsanios, Collective PARA, Fiston Mwanza Mujila, Paulina Semkowicz, and more.

More information about the programme can be found here.

In co-production with the heimaten Festival
A partner programme of steirischer herbst