Highmatt

Steff Signer repeatedly traverses the air column between the Alpstein and Lake Constance, stocking up on alpine cheese, soup chickens, and kids at farms, collecting recipes and, above all, stories. In this book, he presents his findings with a vivid and imaginative use of language. The result is a panorama of rural life, a modern regional book that does not shy away from the strangeness of being at home. In the tradition of the Appenzeller calendar, the book offers a collection of treatises and "soul protocols," engaged reports about outsiders in the small-scale idyll, as well as poems, songs, recipes, and both real and fictional customs. "Enchanted and entertaining figures" populate this universe, with crows or clouds serving as signs of magic and depths in the rural cosmos.