Because of the other point of view on NS  history, we will initiate the public to think about NS  propaganda in their complex dimension: their traces till today  in aesthetical concepts, f. e. in publicity, films, TV  productions and events of some parties. The visitors should  think about control mechanisms and points of view of the  original documents.

Because of the site-specific aspects to  local history, we would like to provoke to think about his own  history.

Because of presenting the influences of  history to our recent time, we would like to provoke a critical  understanding of socio-political relations.

How and where can the influence of history  be made tangible? On which intentions and politics of the image  are the different ways of dealing with the past based? The  exhibition ZUR TEKTONIK DER GESCHICHTE [On Tectonics of  History], curated by Andrea Domesle and Martin Krenn, is trying  to expose the historical traces of the nineteen-thirties and  nineteen-forties that can be still seen in the present and to  reflect on how we deal with Nazi times. The exhibits show to  which extent photography and film - oscillating between  construction and representation - are able to contribute to  finding the truth in history and to formulate images of history  that are not yet consistent with our society.

The exhibition focuses on contemporary  works of art in the fields of photography, film and video.  According to Aleida and Jan Assmann, documentary photography  and film act as image storage for our cultural memory.  Especially since the nineteen-thirties, the technological  achievements have permitted to make use of these two media and  allowed for the steady increase of their distribution. The  image of history in the minds of those who were born too late  is based on those source images that convey illusory  authenticity. Pictures of historical places, people and events  have been reproduced unscrutinized in schoolbooks, television  documentaries, historical museums or magazines. Not  infrequently even propaganda and perpetrator photos of the  Nazis have been drawn on as "image evidence" without  ever putting up for discussion their history of origins.

Contrary to this, the approaches of  artists, for the most part, aim at trying to learn to  understand the original documents as tools enabling us to  construct history. In doing so they work, on the one hand, with  historical facticity and, on the other, with photography, video  or film and the images of history communicated by these media  respectively. This approach can either be based on historical  documents or on original locations that you visit and where the  view communicated by the media comes under scrutiny. Control  mechanisms and points of view of the original documents are  made visible. Confronting them with a different meaning within  the frame of the same medium, the artists extend and adjust the  cultural memory. This exhibition attempts to point out by means  of which different methods and stylistic approaches this can be  done.