Andreas Züst Bibliothek Residency (2026)

Alpenhof, Oberegg, CH
July-August 2026
With Dilbahar Askari (FLOAT)

float: v. to hover, in or as in water. See also: to buoy, as in, to encourage, embolden / v. to wander; to roam, to stray / n. a floating structure, like a dock. A point of departure or arrival; a stabilizing base.

Our collaboration FLOAT stems from a desire to counteract the stubborn immateriality of our writing practice, and to share and bear witness to our creative processes, especially in those phases for which there is no audience.

During our stay at the Alpenhof, we moved through Züst's books and the fields, collecting or sampling, writing, drawing, taking photographs, working with ink and cyanotype. Often, one practice led into another - fluid drawing became fluid text; in the course of an exposure process, a glow found its way into language. Out of these
different movements, publications emerged that make the provisional, the processual, and our exchange visible and tangible.

Erin Mallon. It is always raining. Booklet: 16 pages; black and white laser print on transparent paper. 

Two Women
Beginning with a book title from the French literature shelf (Zwei Frauen, Honoré de Balzac), which I translated as Two Women, I collected depictions of two women from the library. I used different techniques, like ink drawing, photography and collage to interact with the images and bring them into dialogue with one another.

Float 1
Through collaborative practices like cut-up, we experimented with converting our own rough drafts into poems and other fragmentary bi-lingual fusions.

Float 2
With a collection of quotes from the library and selection of images we made during our stay, we created a set of cards that capture our visit in snippets which can be continuously re-combined.

At the Open Studio on August 28, we read extracts from our literary texts and  presented our booklets and other process forms.

My text Zimmer mit Waldblick was inspired by reading Zsuzsanna Gahse, Übersetzt, during the residency and plays with relationships between language, memory, writing and place.