Calypso Cave - #views on #views

Stefan Karrer
Calypso Cave
#views on #views

Softcover, 10.5 × 14.6 cm, 224pp, English
Design: Astrid Seme, Studio with Liza Borovskaya-Brodskaya
Edition: 500
ISBN: 978-3-903353-08-4

Blackforest Library No. 6 is dedicated to Calypso Cave in Malta, a magical place where Calypso, the beautiful nymph, kept Odysseus as a prisoner of love for seven years. Swiss artist Stefan Karrer approaches this place through its photographic reception on social media platforms, and in doing so he has tracked down a comedy of errors:

On October 6th 2020, Instagram celebrated its 10 year anniversary. Shortly after the social photo sharing app was launched in October 2010, Calypso's Cave on the Maltese island of Gozo was closed off to the public after a partial collapse due to geological movement. While the “stabilisation and conservation project” announced by the Ministry of Gozo is still awaiting completion, the cave on the opposite side of the bay has become increasingly popular amongst the social media community – and is now also being tagged – as #calypsocave.

Stefan Karrer's book humorously shows us how social platforms influence and change our travels and the way we consume landscape and its cultural heritage.


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A chronological documentation of this famous cave through reproduced Instagram posts, the series directs our attention to the multiple meanings of the word ‘view’ (see for example the subtitle of this work): what we see in this book is a series of picturesque landscapes (or ‘views’) posted by visitors on Instagram with the hope of acquiring lots of ‘views’ from other Instagram users, Karrer's work can subsequently be understood as offering a view on this quick and easy consumption of culturally significant sites and the valuing of quantity over quality. (Boekie Woekie, Amsterdam)

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Images Can Move a Mountain, or at Least a Cave
(Text by Marco De Mutiis on permanentbeta.network)