Forum Stadtpark
Possessed Mountains

For centuries, the spell of ownership has turned forests, lakeshores, mountains, and valleys into exclusive estates. One of these possessed landscapes is the Koralpe, beneath which lies one of the largest lithium deposits in the EU. Privatized for a symbolic shilling, the mining rights belong to an American-Australian company that wants to process the light metal in Saudi Arabia and sell it as “European lithium.”

The group exhibition uses the legally, symbolically, and materially hollowed-out mountain as an opportunity to reflect on ownership and landscapes in an age of planetary and neocolonial raw material extraction: Why can individuals or companies own mountains (and their mineral resources) at all? What symbolic, legal, and material forms of proprietary possession are there? How can we succeed in emancipating landscapes from the curse of possession?