With Mapping the Rural, I am taking the remnants of my family’s pre and post WWII-built agricultural Barn (Lower Austrian German dialect: ‘der Stadl’) as the foundation for my practice-based research into transient environments and their human and non-human voice, communal stories, and heritage.

Situated in Zwettl am Kamp (AUT), the historic Barn was demolished in 2023 after several attempts of saving the desolate building. This deconstruction coincided with my father’s quickly developing neurodegenerative illness PSP (Progressive Supranuclear Palsy) and thus emerged as a ‘Sinnbild’, a representation of memory loss, absence and the transformation of identity.

Collecting material, sonic and embodied fragments, I am now ‘reconstructing’ the Barn aided by its remaining protagonists, a large home-built Circular Saw (‘die Kreissäge’) and an old Scythe (‘die Sense’) to unpick my family’s heritage and put local materials, practices of labour and site-specific soundscapes into a wider public and national context. With ‘Mapping the Rural’, I am hoping to forge a method set for my speculative and historical narrative-focussed examination of transient and remote place.