Refuge of incoherency

In our installation, we want to show Austria as a vibrant place that is continuously changing, where there is growing and dying, tradition and avant-garde, icons and irony, all inextricably linked with each other. Austria (especially Vienna) has a lot of traditional clichés on it, but has also a lively creative scene, which ironically reflects these platitudes in contemporary music, literature, fine art and design. Our approach is to treat our space as part of a story, a place, where things happened, are happening and will happen. We don’t want a clean lifeless presentation of objects that show good consuming taste; we want to show the environment of a socially active, critically thinking human. - That there is politics, philosophy, controversy and critics. Design is treated as part of a life concept, an organic “Gesamtkunstwerk” or social sculpture. Therefore our Scenography also implies the selection of music, books, objet trouvés, cliché airport-art and souvenirs. We want to show contrast and controversy by confronting traditionalist with polarizing Austrians that break with values and norms: Wiener Werkstätte to Viennese Actionism, Grillparzer to Jelinek, Adolf loos to Coop Himmelb(L)au, Mozart to Fuckhead, etc. The outcome is a conglomerate of ambiguous relationships, a mix of high- and low- culture, art and kitsch and the contraries of daily life.

(Sascha Mikel)