MANHOLE COVER PROJECT LANDSTRASSE
Hidden below street level, the cityscape is traversed by a network of shafts and tunnels through which sewer, gas and district heating pipes pass. The link-up between these unseen underworlds and hectic everyday life in the city is provided by the unobtrusive manhole covers that dot the streets. In a series of interventions between the Main Square and Schiller Park, these manhole covers will be utilized as media for visual and acoustic artworks that open up insights ranging from a depth of 50 meters all the way to the other side of the world.Produced in cooperation with Linz AG
Artistic Collaborators: Linz Art University, Bildhauerei_transmedialer Raum / Renate Herter and Raum- und Designstrategien / Pepi Maier
Katharina Lackner
Hochunten (High Under)
Video installation, 2008
The viewer’s glance falls not upon a manhole cover but a figure gaily clad in a polka-dot dress rotating on her axis like a top. Spinning at breathtaking speed, she seems to be boring further and further into the underground depths. In the first part of the video, the artist opens up and expands the space with her playful movements; in the second part, plunging, she plumbs its depths. Over and over again, she jumps into the abyss and her dress morphs into a sort of parachute. Katharina Lackner’s mode of measuring what lies deep beneath the street appears enchanting and, due to changes of speed, slightly skewed.
Katharina Lackner was born in 1981 in Kirchdorf. She currently lives and works in Linz. www.kathilackner.net
Wolfgang Bretter
Der Zug fährt ab (Stand clear of the closing doors!)
Installation, 2008
A subway—adapted to Linz circumstances—is set in motion by a photoelectric sensor. We hear the familiar announcement “Stand clear of the closing doors” and the interior-lit model train runs in a counterclockwise circle underground. Each car making up this three-car train had to be bent twice to correspond to the diameter of the Linz sewer system. Wolfgang Bretter’s approach to the phenomenon of depth proceeds via a means of transportation and is at the same time an ironic commentary on a smallish city outfitting itself with big-town accessories for its stint as Capital of Culture.
Wolfgang Bretter was born in 1973 in Pöllau/Hartberg. He lives and works in Grieskirchen and Linz.
Svitlana Trattmayr
Kaleidoskop (Kaleidoscope)
Installation, 2008
Instead of colored stones, what’s glittering down here is the stuff from which Landstraße lives. Cash money is tossed into the sewer pipe. We can thus actively set in motion the constantly changing inner workings of what’s transpiring down below. The image of the coins is refracted into a multifaceted symmetrical pattern, and finally into an abstraction. We take part in a playful act in which the process of depositing cash promises something beyond a classic money-for-wares exchange: the view of something spectacular, the hope of return, or simply happiness.
Svitlana Trattmayr was born in 1978 in Lviv, The Ukraine. She lives and works in Linz
Alexander Jöchl
Fluchtweg freihalten! (Emergency Exit Keep Clear!)
Installation, 2008
The familiar directive regarding the exit to use in an emergency appears inside the sewer shaft and thus initially comes across as an ironic reference to regulations and signs posted in public. Nevertheless, the identity of the intended recipients of this message is kept concealed—after all, it’s obvious that the transparent door can only be opened from within. What’s the point of an emergency exit from the sewer system? On a seemingly neutral level, this appears to be a treatment of the concept of fleeing itself, but the emergency drill staged here doesn’t address escape from fire or any other danger. The bottom line is the possibility for each installation visitor to individually confront the subject of escape and exit from the underground.
Alexander Jöchl was born in 1971 in Kitzbühel. He currently lives and works in Linz.
Johannes Steininger
ring…ring…ring…
Installation, 2008
From different distances, sometimes loud, sometimes softly, there’s a ringing from down below. The location of the bell being made to chime can be ascertained from the nameplate next to the doorbell. The inaccessible depths and their specific spatial qualities can be experienced acoustically. We transmit the sound so that it makes a portion of this invisible realm accessible to us with its waves. When we attempt to measure these unfamiliar locations, to take possession of them, we discover, using our sense of hearing, new spaces that we fill with our power of imagination.www.myspace.com/johannessteininger
Johannes Steininger was born in 1977 in Linz. He lives and works in Berlin.
Georg Schobert
Ohne Boden (No Bottom)
Installation, 2008
An optical construction lures us, tempts us to undertake intense mental involvement with depth and to resist dizziness. Peering into the depths of the sewer shaft reveals an apparently bottomless hole. From a considerable distance away comes the sound of sewer water rushing through a channel. What initially seems to be an endlessly long pipe is actually a very complex technical construction that produces a visual system without optical aids. Like a reversed telescope, nested, conically tapered and successively shorter aluminum tubes make the five-meter-long construction seem ten times longer than it actually is. Through this reversal of perspective, installation visitors can playfully experience the affect that depth has upon us.
Georg Schobert was born in 1969 in Tulln. He lives and works in Linz.
Miguel Jose Gonzalez Gonzalez
7.5
Installation, 2008
Support: Alannah Gunter, Victoria University’s School of Design in Wellington, New Zealand & Fringe HQ www.fringe.org.nz
Everybody, at some time or other, has toyed with the idea of taking a peek at the opposite side of the Earth. And no less fascinating is the thought of actually cutting a direct path through the globe. Miguel José Gonzalez Gonzalez opens up this possibility. Peering into the depths of the sewer, you end up gazing into the heavens above Wellington, New Zealand in real time. In order to hit land, the virtual drill hole was angulated by 7.5°, a degree of tilt that also determines the position of the sewer pipe. This unusual perspective not only calls into question the relationship between up and down; it also enables visitors to grasp diametrical opposition, an otherwise abstract concept.
Miguel Jose Gonzalez Gonzalez was born in 1973 in Dornbirn. He lives and works in Linz.
Constantin Chaber
wellenreiterIn (surfer)
Installation, 2008
What seems rather unspectacular at first glance becomes, when the installation visitor brings his/her own body into play, a vertically mobile floating body. The medium that’s in motion deep within the sewer shaft makes it possible to experience that underground space with the senses. That medium, water, becomes a carrier for passers-by for whom it’s interaction via the sense of equilibrium that provides a way to grasp how this unusual “piece of urban furniture” functions.
Constantin Chaber was born in 1978 in Passau, Germany. He lives and works in Linz.
Roland Wegerer
Ich bin kein Fisch (I’m No Fish)
Video installation, 2006/2008
Within the red sewer pipe, a head emerges. The face is slightly distorted and seems strained. Another thing that makes you take notice is the movement of the air bubbles. They float downward. What seems to be like surfacing from the depths of the sewer is actually the moment of submerging in it. This video, which shows artist Roland Wegerer during repeated dives, is turned on its head: on the monitor affixed at eye-level, it engenders the illusion of someone surfacing from the sewer system. In his simple experimental setup, Wegerer confronts installation visitors with the fundamental structures of our everyday life and impressively limns its boundaries.
Roland Wegerer was born in 1974 in Amstetten. He lives and works in St. Nikola, Upper Austria. www.rolandwegerer.com
Stefan Hofer
event horizon
Installation, 2008
The view into this sewer conveys us into a mediatized experiential space of quite an unusual sort. From below, two-dimensional images are decontextualized in that they’re projected into a three-dimensional material. Moving about in the water are graphic structures that morph into bodies made of light, and it’s precisely this transient carrier medium that enables the material to become visible in the first place. Light speed and space-time curvature—the concepts to which this work’s title refers—have become symbols for the Information Age. This sensory installation plays with the visualization of such barely imaginable phenomena.
Stefan Hofer was born in 1980 in Kufstein, Tyrol. He lives and works in Linz.
