MAXIMILIAN ERBACHER
Maximilian Erbacher was born in 1970 in Rosenheim, Germany. He studied at the Univer¬sity of Ulster, Ireland, and at the Academy for Media Arts, Cologne. His oeuvre, consist¬ing of installation, photo and video, is always concerned in one way or another with a desire many people share: the wish to reconstruct within the globalized world and with the means of modern media a sense of home that they deem long lost. German folk music shows, which are presented to millions of TV viewers, are an important theme in Erbacher’s work. He is particularly interested in the simulation of home-like rites and cul¬tural codes that are presented as authentic when they are already fundamentally altered by being broadcast via modern mass media. His video “Hymn” deals with the “Beichle Jutz”, a song that is performed by hundreds of yodelers during the Swiss Yodeling Festival in Aarau every year. In the video, the artist appears to be a marshaler on an airfield -symbol of the hypermobile globalized world – where he pretends to soundlessly conduct the “Beichle Jutz” that has become something of secret national hymn for many Swiss.