KOEXISTENZEN — CASANZA

The contribution to the Gherdëina X 2026 Biennale, presented across two venues, unfolds as a sustained reflection on coexistence, spatial responsibility and the fragile architectures of communal life.

In a former agricultural barn in St. Christina, his ongoing photographic project Koexistenzen is installed as a deliberately open and non-hierarchical arrangement. Photographs lean against walls, occupy transitional positions within the space and thus resist the rigidity of a conventional exhibition presentation. This spatial strategy reflects the theme of the work itself: the historical and contemporary realities of Alpine communities characterised by common ownership and collective self-governance. In the Fleimstal valley and the surrounding regions, where Italian, German and Ladin cultures intersect, the concept of the ‘commons’ appears not as an idealised model, but as a lived and negotiated condition – one that generates both continuity and tensions.The second work, presented at the Museum Gherdëina, extends this investigation to a markedly different context. In collaboration with Marina Ballo Charmet, Niedermayr developed Casanza (2022), a two-channel video filmed at the women’s prison on the island of Giudecca in Venice. The focus is on a large, cultivated garden tended by the inmates together with staff from a cooperative and volunteers. The camera adopts a restrained, observational stance, allowing daily routines – planting, tending, moving through the space – to unfold without narrative constraints. What does it mean for the women to be incarcerated in this facility, which is characterised by spaces for movement, creativity, openness, working with nature and the soil, communication and much more? Can incarcerated women, through their relationship with nature – by tending to it and caring for it – create moments of possibility and new perspectives for themselves that extend beyond the conditions of their imprisonment?