Ingeborg Strobl’s work displays a predilection for the marginalized, the hidden, that which is all too easily overlooked or suppressed, as well as an associated antipathy toward the delusion of production and consumption, whose excesses she observes with a trenchant irony and intelligent wit. The enthusiastic cineaste circumvents the conventions of the elaborate and exclusive in the production and mediation of her film works too. Most of her videos are available on YouTube under Inga Troger, a pseudonym that combines the Indian version of her first name with her mother’s maiden name.
In short episodes observed and filmed on her travels to faraway countries as well as in her local surroundings, Strobl succeeds in bringing to light the metaphorical and societal in the everyday, private and seemingly banal. Art here consists not of elaborately staging imaginary tales but of discovering and precisely observing events that occur regardless, which contain plenty of curiosities and oddities in themselves. In this, Strobl focuses time and again on animal motifs that reveal something about human patterns of behavior and developments in society.
Rainer Fuchs
