After the discussion of the production process and structural composition of the picture poems, it is now time to turn to the referential origins of the images’ content in the real world, and the specific nature of their representation. The abundance of the approximately 65 cycles of picture poems (with a sum total of circa 1550 picture poems and over 6000 incorporated photos) created over the course of four decades makes it impossible to examine individual cycles here. Accordingly, this discussion will single out important thematic and motivic complexes that Cibulka has pursued over the course of several cycles as well as specific works that are representative of certain practices.

A large portion of Cibulka’s earlier picture poems were presented under the title Land-Alphabete in 1983. These provide the first group of thematic fields to be spoken about here.⁴² Most of the work from this period was created in the countryside around Vienna – in the world of Lower Austrian farmers and winegrowers. Cibulka had already moved from Vienna to Königsbrunn in 1967, and this was where he began ‘his career as an artist with a cataloguing search for clues and traces found in [his] new surroundings’.⁴³ Even so, the picture poems, which he began to produce around seven years later, certainly do not take the form of a documentary catalogue of rural life.

Cibulka’s picture motifs in series such as Reizbarkeit Weinviertel (1975), Bisamberg (1980), Most – fühlt (1981) or Gemischter Satz (1982) concentrate on core themes. One of these is the existential aspect, in scenes from daily life on the farm and in the vineyard, which he summarized with the catchphrases ‘killing, eating, mating, giving birth’.⁴⁴ He directs his gaze towards fields, stalls, wine cellar lanes, farm animals and pets, and towards people in the context of their related activities and conditions.⁴⁵ He also pursues the theme of communal festivities such as dance events, and above all, the rituals of the Catholic liturgy: First Communion, weddings, harvest festival processions, funerals. In photos of interiors, Cibulka shows family altars and particular set pieces, either close to hand or from the perspective of someone just entering: tables ready laid, sideboards, food in an enamel pot on the stove or light brown coffee in heavy mugs.

Notably, motifs such as giant puddles of blood, close-ups of roasted knuckle of pork and potato soup, piles of manure and mud, scraped knees, cattle being bled, wild flowers, a disco ball in semidarkness or oompah bands awaken a wide range of memories of perceptions and experiences – all the more strongly, the nearer the viewer’s connection to the represented cultural setting. Materiality, in the sense of those tangible and tactile qualities of surface that the photographic medium is capable of reproducing in detail, is not presented, but more comprehensively played upon:⁴⁶ embedded in pragmatic proximity and activity, in a ‘simple life’ that understands culture in the sense of the cultivation of nature and stands in an unquestioning relationship to religious practice. Among these pictures, there are also those which are on the margins of this ‘natural’ pragmatism and primarily serve to communicate an ambience: landscapes lit by the setting sun or three laughing girls buzzing through the photo on a single moped.

The Land-Alphabete can be understood as a compendium of the basic elements of a fulfilled life. That neither a documentary nor a subjective approach was used has been explained in the previous chapter, which dealt with the idiom and organization of Cibulka’s images. Cibulka’s choice of motifs also makes this clear; the artist deliberately omits specific aspects.⁴⁷ His unquestionable interest in an ‘impartial’ representation depicts rural life quasi as a timeless utopia, not as a body of facts to be subjected to psychological, sociological or political analysis.⁴⁸ At the same time, Cibulka’s picture (poetics) of rural life – a metaphor for the unsullied and primitive, according to Georg F. Schwarzbauer – is itself shaped by the historical context of its development. This needs to be emphasized, particularly since the intervening decades have added a patina to this world of photographic images.

As Peter Zawrel demonstrated in 1993, Cibulka’s early picture poems appeared during a specific phase of historically shifting views about the countryside, views which were always developed in relation to the city as the antithesis. This phase consisted in the transition between two distinctive concepts. On the one hand, there was the immediate post-war period, when the view of the countryside as shaped by Nazi and fascist ideology was still present and the farmer’s life as a topic and mythology was discredited (in an art context, at any rate). On the other hand, there was a phase that began later, when rural life was rediscovered within the context of a broad ecology movement and seen in a positive light. Cibulka’s approach has its roots in the latter, at a time when ‘the uncomplicated abundance of life in the countryside [was] still the primary interest of those who, not yet taken in by concepts such as “ecological”, “organic”, “alternative” and “original”, went there to enjoy what the rebuilt cities … could no longer offer. This had nothing to do with “dropping out”: it was more beatnik than Tolstoy. It was not about alternatives, but about supplements.’⁴⁹

On account of their widespread, or in the eighties, extant effectiveness, both ideological appropriations of rural life – the Nazi as well as the ecological – were available within the recipients’ range of associations (as a brown or green shadow, so to speak). As early as 1982, Reinhard Priessnitz accurately noted the fact that Cibulka’s position had to outspokenly assert itself within this context.⁵⁰ In Cibulka’s later work phases, it is evident that the philosophy of life visualized in his picture poems can also be shown outside the context of rural life. This already manifests itself within the context of the Land-Alphabete. A discussion of a picture poem from the series Bisambergoffers an apt transition to this topic.

Here we find a photo of a cesspit; in the photo to its right, a young man dives into a quarry pond. The photo below this one shows a detail of a poster with a woman putting a glass of sparkling wine to her lips; next to it, there is a sort of Ferris wheel with its gondolas lit up before the night sky. Ignoring the many correlations that can be conceived of between the four elements, each of which allows its particular connotations, simply, one interpretation is implied: the tidiness of the advertisement becomes a hollow promise of enjoyment and the pleasure of being driven around in circles in an amusement park is relativized. This, through the confrontation with the cesspool, which can be interpreted as a metaphor for transcience, and the daring dive into the pond, into which joie de vivre, activity, dynamism and self-determination can be interpreted – completely without blood, wine and family altars.

During the eighties, Cibulka began to take photographs in cities in Austria and abroad. These can be subsumed within a second thematic category, which is still active in his current production of picture poems: Wien I (1984), Berlin – Empfindungskomplexe (1985), New York (1985), Rom (1986), Wien II Donaustadt + Floridsdorf (1988), Linz wie Licht (1991), Antwerpen (1991/92), Napoli – n’gopp e cient (1996), w.i.e.n. (2002), bud[apest] (2008/09) bis seoul (2010). Unlike the works grouped together in the book Land-Alphabete, the fifteen ‘city cycles’ created up till now have never been published as a group; instead, they have usually been published independently of one another, sometimes accompanied by locally relevant texts written by authors familiar with the cities involved.⁵¹ In the exhibition Stadtquartette in the Vienna museum of photography WestLicht, the relevant cycles of picture poems will be displayed together for the first time. Hence Cibulka’s exploration of the environment of the urban experience will be traceable as one of his leitmotifes.

The list above permits an explanation of Cibulka’s choice of titles: in most cases they merely identify the location, whereby the differences in spelling indicate whether the picture poems were produced with an analogue (normal capitalization) or digital (lower case only) technique. When series titles go beyond a simple indication of the location, Cibulka’s additions typically play on empathic or sensual aspects of perception and thus indicate the conceptual background of the picture poems (‘excitability’, ‘feels’, ‘emotional complexes’). With the passing years, these addenda have largely disappeared. This reservedness in respect to titles might seem surprising in an artist who has also produced a considerable body of literary work. But precisely this fact makes it clear that Cibulka deliberately limits his use of the work title as paratext. ⁵²

A consideration of the city cycles reveals Cibulka’s approach to the places he visits: he is neither pursuing a systematic documentation (suitable for an objectivizing comparison) nor claiming to comprehensively deal with the individual cities, with their sociology, physical infrastructure or myth-laden images. In this way, the significance of a series title such as New York is once again clarified: it is not the descriptive title of an image (in the sense of ‘This is New York’), but merely a geographic identifier (‘picture poems consisting of photographs that were taken in New York’).

When Cibulka lays claim to ‘a kind of phenomenologically oriented view of things and situations that is as impartial as possible’, then, for his city cycles, this means that he sets out without any treatises on cultural or urban studies in his baggage. He does not analyse phenomena such as globalization, Disneyfication or gentrification – regardless of the fact that some of his motifs may lead to such associations. He is equally unconcerned with tracing, avoiding or criticizing typical tourist routes. Traditional tourist sites are scarce, but almost every picture poem contains clear indications of the given city’s identity. Here it is once again true that the more familiar viewers are with the location where the photos were taken, the more astonished they will be at Cibulka’s ability to take photos containing an atmosphere that evokes memories associated with the location. In this context, there are a number of motifs that Cibulka records at several locations: street views with a central vanishing point, traffic, individual monuments and artworks in museums, a view of a coffee cup from different tea-and-coffee services or (passing) couples seen from behind. Furthermore, there are motifs that are not specific to any location, which reveal Cibulka’s interest in existential or material-sensual metaphors such as eggs, accidents, children, medications as well as dirt and decay.

A comparison of the city cycles with the Land-Alphabete renders certain extensions in Cibulka’s pictorial idiom and motifs apparent. Firstly, there are more indications of the different motivations and circumstances behind the photos and the journeys, whereby these play the role of modest ‘side plots’ and resist any clear identification (Does the package of birth control pills belong to Cibulka’s companion or were they already there when they came to the hotel room? Is someone looking into the camera because he or she knows the photographer or is it a spontaneous contact?) Secondly, the pictorial idiom now varies more strongly from city to city. Some cycles are dominated by a particular tonality (Berlin: gray-blue; Russia: a washed-out, reddish light brown). There are also tendencies specific to certain cycles that are reminiscent of particular photographic styles (street photography, photojournalism) or of isolated foibles for certain photographic effects (reflections, framed views, motion blurring).

If we are to trace Cibulka’s photographic work according to his ‘thematic’ interests, we can recognize a third group of works in which he takes a more narrow approach to his subject matter. In series such as Hochgebirgsquartette (1984/86), Im Pechwald (1986), Köflach (1989), and Knittelfeld (1990), he devotes his attention to specific cultural landscapes and their commercial use: alpine husbandry and tourism in the Tauern area, the production of black pine sap in the Lower Austrian Piesting Valley or mining and industry in Styria. The subject matter is usually defined within the context of commissioned projects, whereby the origins of such commissions are always causally related to Cibulka’s independent production. ⁵³

This is also the case among cycles devoted to particular people, such as Günter Brus, Franz West, Hermann Nitsch or Wolfgang Tunner. Cibulka has long been familiar with the context of their lives and work, and convergences and alliances with the visual universe of his other cycles are usually also found here. This demonstrates once again that the groupings attempted here serve only as an aid for navigating his oeuvre and are grafted onto it from the outside. In other words, the strategy developed in the early cycles from the countryside is consistently elaborated, whereby Cibulka’s pictorial concept, that provides ‘multiple valences’ (Kurt Kaindl), can incorporate changes of emphasis within his approach, stylistic adaptations and new complexes of themes, just as it permits the continuation of specific aspects and leitmotifs.

Lastly, a fourth leitmotif of Cibulka can be called the topos of the journey. This manifests itself clearly in the more recent long distance journeys, in the course of which he once again began to produce picture poems, now in digital form, after a long pause. Undertaking journeys as an impulse behind and a pragmatic context for his artwork can also be traced back to the beginning of Cibulka’s career: from his tours through Austrian cultural landscapes, to the international city cycles and on to the early explorations of the countryside around Vienna. In the two cycles aus nachbars garten (1995) and chinoiserie (2000), excerpts from Cibulka’s travel journals accompanied the photos.⁵⁴ That which had already surfaced in other cycles now becomes tangible: the author of the images ‘seeps’ into the themes and motifs of the work, but does not step into the foreground (see Note 37).

This can be read into the photos when, for example, the text mentions a handcart that is used for transporting Cibulka’s luggage and children, and this appears in the image; primarily, however, when particular recurring motifs are recognized once more. This is commensurate with a reencounter, when one discovers a tea glass ready to hand in Syria – it occupying the place of the coffee cup whose many variations one has identified with the artist since its first appearance in Hochzeit (1980). In its ‘steadfastness of first sight’ (Gerhard Roth), Cibulka’s observant eye for the marginal is not only directed at signifiers of the foreign culture, such as signboards. An egg, a handful of salt or fish become localizable only within the context of the block of four photos. The depiction’s fragmentariness, the blurriness and blank spaces can be read afresh in a new context: in syria (2008), for example, as literal unrecognizability, an admission of the foreignness with which we find ourselves confronted before the other.

The journey undertaken here through the oeuvre of Cibulka’s picture poems also comes to its end with this thematic field of travel. The last stop makes clear: the further one travels and leaves the familiar behind, the nearer one comes to one's roots, the conditionality of one's culture, existence, individuality and world view. This confrontation can also be an inducement to venture into uncertainty, to face up to the immovability of boundaries and limits.

It is Cibulka’s organization of his material into the structure of the picture poems and cycles that preserves the subtle balance among the different (thematic, visual-idiomatic) tendencies within each unit. At the same time, various threads create interconnections between the individual poems of a cycle, and also point to other cycles and to work groups in other media (object pictures, performances, poems, collections of material). In this manner, diverse approaches and outlets open up. Through flexibly interrelated connections, many aspects can become linked to many others. Accordingly, Cibulka’s work resists strict categorization or periodization. Thus, for the description of the entire body of picture poems, a rhizomatic figure seems more appropriate than a linear-chronological sequence of development, involving a series of clearly distinct phases and branches. If, in conclusion, one wanted to summarize his topic in a single phrase: he describes nothing less than life itself. Cibulka’s cycles do not present the reality of our existence as a sovereign-apodictic definition, nor as a cool critique of the regimes of representations of the world or as the desperate image of an untenable subjectivity but rather, in active, devoted acceptance.