A Look behind the Façade
Unter uns
Copyright: Linz09
The so-called bridgehead building links the Nibelungen Bridge with Linz’s Main Square. It’s one of the few architectural projects that the Nazis actually completed in Linz. The “Amidst Us” project takes a radical step in order to reveal the building’s history.
Artist Hito Steyerl came up with this concept. Beginning February 17, some of the plaster will be removed from the building’s façade to bring its “raw innards” to light. The area where the plaster is hacked away will form a simplified representation of the routes of persons involved in the construction—how some were enslaved and shipped to Linz; how some were able to flee. The sight of the structure’s unadorned inner layer brings up a number of questions: Who built this? Who commissioned this edifice? Who was the architect? Where did the building materials come from and whose task was it to prepare them? An unsettling project that takes up a single, highly charged example here in Linz as a means of elaborating on one facet of Nazi thinking and everyday life under National Socialism.Amidst Us
Beginning February 28, 2009
Brückenkopfgebäude East, Hauptplatz
Details about the project
In cooperation with BIG Bundes Immobilien Gesellschaft
