Category: Exhibition

The series Island of foam is a wonderfully messy affair, using a foam machine connected to differently colored water tanks to create an island of foam. The island fades away and is periodically renewed, allowing visitors to see the process in action.

Lüning’s works are process-oriented and move between total control during an experimental setup and absolute surrender to the initiated process itself. Among other things, she experiments with colored foam, soap bubbles, and blocks of ice, examining bodies of water for their formative peculiarities, leaving chance to play a significant role in the artistic process.

In her temporary work, colored foam measures spill over the entire roof, leaving behind ephemeral color sculptures.

Sidetracks of the Future is looking at buildings and infrastructure and how interconnectivity of landmarks is shaping the city and its surroundings.

The BULGARI OPERA completes the round ensemble of Bulgari Square. The architectural memory of the city is also political. The view over the Blumau forms a visual and mental connection between Landstraße and Wienerstraße and leaves open the place where Hitler dreamed of an opera in “his” Linz. The theatre site is named after Anton Bulgari, who fought against Austrofascists there in February 1934 and was executed days later.

MÜHLKREIS BRIDGE and TUNNEL, planned as Autobahnextension into the Mühlviertel. Realizing this would increase traffic the plans where modified to provide a connection of the Mühlkreisbahn via main station, into the industrial area and further to the Summerauer Bahn. Further construction will connect the Mühlviertel in the North via Czech Republic, creating MÜHLVIERTEL LOOP LINE.

When structural integrity of former Eisenbahnbrücke became a concern for cars, a bypass was built and the steel skeleton enclosed in glass was turned into a tropical green house, the MONKEY BRIDGE.

In the work A Minore Amore, conceived for the artist-in-residency programme FM[Ai]R, Jaakko Myyri deals in a multi-layered way with the preservation of queer stories around the quest for love. In collaboration with the Homosexuelle Initiative Linz (HOSI Linz), he built a digital archive that was filled with content in participatory workshop settings. The starting point was the artist’s reflections on the extent to which heteronormative environments influence the emergence and transmission of erotic terminology and intimate, everyday expressions.

The hay bale sculptures in the installation create a relaxed and rural-looking physical space. Visitors are invited to sit on them and watch the clouds. By scanning the QR-coded stones from the Danube, one gains access to a virtual place where digital clouds can be observed, the animated part of which is generated from the archive of queer stories and desires and contains text fragments that have been written and collected together by the contributors of the queer community in Linz. Like passing clouds or the clearing sky after a thunderstorm, they unfold metaphorical interpretations and invite visitors to reflect on the transience of conceptual connotations.

Our human body is our portal to experience physical reality. It enables us to grasp existence with our senses. In the virtual world, representations of our body are often reproduced, but why do we feel compelled to represent ourselves with our physical forms? In virtuality, we can take on any shape, form, or being. On the Internet, we are actually no longer bound to this physical form. Nevertheless, we often fall into the old patterns of translating IRL in URL instead of breaking through this thinking with the boundlessness of the digital body.

We mostly represent our self through our face, it serves us as a recognition feature and we define our identity through it. With the filter, we can detach ourselves from these specifications in brief moments and change and modify our physical form at will. Become your own customizable avatar IRL and URL. ✨🧚🏻

Lucia** =):
How do I delete the grid behind a transparent background?
Re: to @Lucia** =):
It’s like asking where the sun goes at night.
Re: to @Lucia** =): 
You understand that it already represents nothing?
How do you represent nothing? 
Wherever you see this transparency grid, you know you are looking at nothing.

Brush Stroke is a series of flat, minimalist sculptures printed with a white and grey grid on the front side. Seen and photographed from a specific point of view, it is perceived as a brush stroke that erases the space in which the work is installed, as it would do in an image editing software. Does this work exist as an object in space, or merely as a digital image? Does this distinction make any sense at all? 

“Sometimes I forget that the internet is a real place. It exists everywhere on the planet, connecting computers with cables and invisible lights. Only when I look at the rooftops I see these bodies of steel, and I wonder: what if I could see the clouds created by our online activities? Would I be more mindful of where my data ends up? Would I be scared of electrosmog and pollution?”

Matthias Pitscher’s ephemeral installation Cloud makes the infrastructure of mobile networks visible by shrouding their physical structures in mist for a moment. The metaphor of the cloud is taken literally focussing the transmission towers that connect directly to global data centres. The artwork, which appears irregularly,  depending on data turnover for that cell site, is a materialization of an otherwise invisible flow of information. The installation draws people’s eyes to the rooftops, thoughts about aesthetics, fears and functionality of our information infrastructures are inevitably triggered. Pitscher invites us to look up into the clouds and daydream of all the packages floating through the air.

How real is our reality today? From the Latin “virtus” (strength or virtue), “virtual” is an adjective that originally refers to what has the potential to produce an effect, although it does not produce it in the present. A painting or a photograph, a video or Instagram profile of a woman does not present the real woman, but what she could be. Each generation of human beings is capable of getting used to new levels of virtuality in their lives and assuming them as real. For example, when we scroll a web page we assume that we are scrolling a column of text with images up or down but the truth is that it is an illusion, generated with computer programming since there is nothing above or below what appears on our screen and all content is instantly translated into our visual language thanks to a code. Over time we add micro perceptions like this to our reality. What we call reality could be very virtual for someone belonging to centuries past.

Carrying the Cross is a durational performance that has been derived from an ongoing body of work investigating global interconnection utopia, spiritual magic and contemporary algorithmic slavery dystopia. The artist carries a giant sculptural “f” through the streets of Linz – the crucifixion marking the pinnacle moment of the performance.

Conceived as a commentary on digital platforms and, more generally, on the growing weight of the private sector both in the public space and in the private sphere, the performative procession was originally conceived as part of “EDEN”, Filipe Vilas-Boas’ solo show at Zaratan Arte Contemporânea in Lisbon during July 2019. In September 2019, the performance was reenacted in London around Tate Modern, as part of the Tate Ex-change program curated by Hyphen Labs. The piece aims to stimulate discussion on issues surrounding digital platforms, such as privacy, data extractivism, surveillance capitalism, digital labor and algorithm biases. Carrying the Cross draws on the emotiveness of hope and oppression within the parameters of digitalization where technology meets religion.

With R.I.P. (Rest in Privacy), the artist once again takes up religious traditions and alienates them for his own purposes, similar to the performance Carrying the Cross. Where in Christian tradition a memorial stone is a sign for the loved ones who are no longer with us, Filipe Vilas-Boas invites us to mourn the decline of privacy with this installation. 

Privacy, specifically that in our digitised everyday lives with emails, social media and webcams on every laptop, has been increasingly vulnerable for years now. From large-scale surveillance of US citizens by the US National Security Agency (NSA), online services that we – unknowingly – feed with data on our personal surfing behaviour – it is our daily actions that put our right to hide our most intimate or personal moments under great pressure.

Join together for a collective session around R.I.P. (Rest in Privacy), to commemorate what we have not realized was so essential, until we didn’t have it anymore.

We trade with air! At the Airmarket, Linz’ air becomes a commodity that can be purchased and managed by the Airmarket. Air pollution is the scene of ecological and economic injustice. The resulting exhaust gas concentrations are not compatible with health and go hand in hand with the fact that in the future more and more people will breathe polluted air.

Therefore, secure clean air now, so that it will not be scarce in the future. With us you can purchase airspace in trade with your data and browse our assortment via a user interface. An official document from our Airmarket certifies your legal right to your airspace.