An engaging art novel turned travel guide, not to places, but to worlds and ways of travel.
Written by Franziska Lamprecht with photos by Hajoe Moderegger and published by Nightboat Books. Order the book here or if you want a signed copy you can buy it directly from us. Send us an email.
“I can think of no other visual artists who could synthesize their practice and emerge with a novel this good. They achieve what all art aims for—a pulse which keeps each page alive. This pulse creates a tension between the strange and the pure, between the compelling and the mundane—page-by-page it reminds me of Sebald. The few days I spent wandering its pages were precious.” – Nick Flynn
This unique novel of visual ideas, Grabeland, imagines a literary, artful and art-inspired journey, a precise travelogue of sites and possible meanings. The obsession at the heart of Grabeland engaged me completely. – Lynne Tillman
“Grabeland successfully merges descriptions of banal everyday activities, political and historical facts and fictions, Proustian reminiscences of the artists’ own childhood and the elements of a road trip novel into a dazzling read. eteam’s diary-like storytelling unravels complicated, sometimes unnerving and quite often hilarious oppositions of generations, cultures, political views and ways of living, in which urgency of art making and community building is a constant undertone.” – Zeljka Himbele
Grabeland takes place in a country that no longer exists, in a culture rooted in soil and projections. The story tours the inner exiles of its characters as they test the limitations of their actual existence. Focusing on Germany and The United States, Grabeland dramatizes the formation of national identity and ultimately its dissolution through an accumulation of personal and collective experiences, anecdotes, accidents, propaganda, falsifications, histories, victimizations, inventions, dreams, and hopes.
here is a video-book review by Computer Ed, one of our main collaborators at International Airport Montello
interview with Alex Teplitzky from Creative Capital
interview with Sahar Khraibani from Nightboat Books
podcast with Turner Canty for Full-Stop
This project would not have been possible without the support of Creative Capital, The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, CUNY Research Foundation, The Center for Land Use Interpretation, the Corporation of Yaddo, Smack Mellon and M29 in Cologne.
See a list of eteam’s other writings here