From ARTWALK to AR[T]WALK
This year, we are transferring all three of our past ARTWALKs into the digital realm. In collaboration with the Artificial Museum, we are transforming our ARTWALKs into [AR]TWALKs and making our artistic research permanently accessible as virtual artifacts in public space.
In previous editions of ARTWALKs, we have uncovered hidden stories of Favoriten, the Brotfabrik and the Bohemian Prater. Now we are digitizing everything - archive material, interviews and combining it with audiovisual storytelling - so that in future stories and history can be explored like an interactive scavenger hunt through the district, directly from your own smartphone.
This process is already in full swing and we are very excited to continue this special project together with the Artificial Museum and keep you updated on the ongoing digitization.
ARTWALK Triple
What is an ARTWALK
It's important to us to continually reach out to people with our art and into public spaces: We regularly venture out into our immediate neighborhood, the district, and the outskirts of Vienna to conduct artistic urban explorations and communicate these publicly in an ARTWALK. Equipped with boom microphones, wireless headphones, and recorded interviews, we invite the audience to explore their surroundings in an artistic way. Our goal is to create a lasting encounter and look behind the facade. There will be artistic interventions at several stops along the way. The whole experience will be interwoven through our research and interviews with contemporary witnesses from our story collection center:
Making research come alive
In cooperation with INSELMILIEU Reportage , we explore space and time, tracing lost traces. A walk-through research experience, sensually enhanced by scenic, visual, and musical interventions. History inscribes itself in spaces and bodies, filling places with memories. Following this principle, we create an artistic-historical archive that can be experienced spatially: by bringing the historic walls to life, the past becomes alive and the present becomes history.
ARTWALK Favoriten
A look behind the headlines
Women in public space The combination of direct encounters and artistic engagement with the district creates a multi-layered, differentiated image of Favoriten. Artistic interventions and performances such as “Female Bodies resting in public space” by the KLAUS collective focus on making the female perspective visible in public space. Inspired by the feminist activist Valie Export, who shaped activism 50 years ago, the project questions what feminist activism can look like today. The performers use their bodies to create sculptures and dance scenes that address the role of women in public space.
ARTWALK Brotfabrik
Multimedia reappraisal of the past
Go on a search for clues through the over 130-year-old walls of the bread factory with wireless headphones. The transdisciplinary production team brings the stories of the place to life for the audience through artistic stations of photography, literature, installation art, music, video and performance. Between aerial silk performances, cello sounds and sound collages, the audio walk primarily raises questions about a dark historical chapter: What atrocities took place in the bread factory during the Nazi era and what happened when the bakery was Aryanized? Today, the site of the bread factory in Vienna-Favoriten appears as if there had never been a Jewish history. This multimedia production aims to fill this void. In search of answers, visitors are immersed in two captivating life stories that are closely linked to the Ankerbrot factory and the National Socialist regime. Ankerbrot heiress and Nazi profiteer The once largest bakery in Europe left Vienna in 2023 after 130 years. What remains behind? What can a place tell us? Who remembers what and what seems to have been completely forgotten? A daughter who tries to decipher her secretive mother. A son struggling with the ghost of his father. Together we follow her verses and accompany her every step of the way in her search for clues through time. On the way, we listen to people remembering. At eight artistic stations, we experience how layer after layer is removed to see what lies behind it.
ARTWALK Böhmischer Prater
Between exploitation and pleasure
The setting for this ARTWALK is the Bohemian Prater on Laaer Berg in Favoriten, which with its charming turn-of-the-century flair is like a window into another time. The “small” Prater and its surrounding nature serve as a legendary backdrop, which is “misappropriated” in the encounter with contemporary art: Sound installations in the forest, dance performances in a wine tavern and brick artworks on trees immerse you in an adventure trail through one of the city's most peculiar places. The groups stop off at the Geissler family's private barrel organ museum, in the old railroad carriage from the Ernst Hrabalek Park, on a ride on the Ferris wheel or at the oldest ring game in Europe, where Emperor Franz Joseph I is said to have had fun. The tour comes to a cozy end at the “Zum Werkelmann” wine tavern. Between exploitation and pleasure In recorded interviews, showmen, barrel organ players, contemporary witnesses and regulars tell historical and anecdotal everyday stories, which visitors can listen to via headphones during the walk. The artistic performances expand on individual scenes, bringing the past to life and turning the present into history.
