In 2024, the Austrian Film Museum's 60th anniversary year, this invitation went out to a handpicked selection of readers who, independent from their extremely different activities – be they filmmakers, researchers, artists, curators or students – have something in common, namely a distinct passion for the "ancient" cultural technology of reading. In this series of short, pointed interviews, they provide information about their approaches to books, their research preferences, and their practices in the analog and digital galaxies of writing.
The series owes its title to a radio program broadcast in early 1988 on Sender Freies Berlin: Film historian and filmmaker Günter Peter Straschek formulated the request of "visit me soon in the reading room" to look into "experiences with material memory." Now, almost four decades after Straschek's investigation, the question here is also about the way these experiences with immaterial forms of memory are related.
Idea: Elisabeth Streit Realisation: Tom Waibel