"Crossing borders. Religion and the Alps»

The Alps are a cultural and living space that unites tensions: danger and benefit, fear and worship are close together. Chapels on difficult passages illustrate this as well as the rituals during tunnel construction, the invocation of an avalanche-averting goddess on a house saying or the transcendent emotions that alpinists experience when reaching a summit that is difficult to access. The Alps are made tangible through tourism and technology, and yet remain uncontrollable.

In this tension between the experiential and the incomprehensible, the controllable and the uncontrollable, the book "Grenzgänge. Religion and the Alps". Through an interplay of image, music and text, it unfolds a unique view of religion in the Alps and encourages reflection on this special habitat and the challenges it faces. The publication is presented through a dialogue between music by Matthias Arter and stories by Anna-Katharina Höpflinger, Daria Pezzoli-Olgiati and Boris Previšic. This event will take place as part of the Alpine Convention's "Reading Mountains" festival on the occasion of International Mountain Day 2024 (11 December). The event will be held in German.

The book contains photographs by Marco Volken, QR codes for the performances of the musical compositions by Matthias Arter and Darija Andovska by the pre-art soloists, as well as texts by David Atwood, Jens Badura, Andreas Bäumler, Pierre Bühler, Paolo Costa, Verena Marie Eberhardt, Hannah Griese, Anna-Katharina Höpflinger, Jon Mathieu, Rudolf Meyer, Jochen Mündlein, Daria Pezzoli-Olgiati, Boris Previšic, Martin Scharfe, Baldassare Scolari and Aline Stadler.


Image: © Marco Volken