TIEFENRAUSCH / Rapture of the Deep – Art and Tours in Linz’s Underworlds
Press Conference
Monday, May 26th 2008, 12.30
OK Center for Contemporary Art
A Project by the OK Center for Contemporary Art for Linz 2009 European Capital of Culture
Opening: Thursday, May 29, 2008, 6 p.m. / OK
- OK | Museum of the Underworlds
- Aktienkeller | River of Forgetting
- Landstraße | Manhole Covers
- Linz Underground | Crypts, Tunnels, Cisterns
- OK Square | 40,000 Liters of Attersee Lake Water
The 2009 Capital of Culture is being launched with a lead-in program to get the city psyched up even before the big year is here. “Art in the City,” a series of exhibitions being staged by the OK Center for Contemporary Art in cooperation with Linz09, is one of the absolute highlights of this program. It consists of three exhilarating incursions sequentially probing the boundaries of the public sphere: 2007 SCHAURAUSCH – Viewing Spree, 2008 TIEFENRAUSCH – Rapture of the Deep, and, coming in 2009, HÖHENRAUSCH – High-Altitude Euphoria.
As the central element of this programmatic excursion, TIEFENRAUSCH will be plumbing the depths of Linz’s subterranean worlds.
TIEFENRAUSCH is a multi-part exhibition dispersed throughout the city, a multi-layered undertaking, a diversified blend of art projects and museum objects, narratives drawn from everyday life and scholarly cultural investigations, out-of-the-ordinary venues as well as pragmatic guided tours. And it is precisely this distinctive image, according to Linz09 Artistic Director Martin Heller, “that bespeaks what Linz is trying to achieve as European Capital of Culture. Because what is manifested here is the claim to enabling people to experience art without trivializing it, touching people instead of lecturing them.”
For Governor Josef Pühringer, it’s “logical that the OK, the Province of Upper Austria’s center for contemporary art” has developed and carried out this project. “The OK is an experimental laboratory of art that, in this project, is going beyond the confines of its own facility to show how exciting contemporary art really is and how much art can contribute not only to intellectually satisfying leisure-time pleasures but also to the development of our society.”
But what business does art have out in the city? Simply this: it’s a matter of new areas of interplay and new approaches. Art has to get out there and make a statement in everyday life and thus amongst the general public, most members of which never venture into art museums. In this constellation, the best bet is to go with authentic, lively, up-front encounters—and this is of decisive importance for the success of a Capital of Culture.
Curatorial Staff:
Rainer Zendron, Martin Sturm, Genoveva Rückert
In cooperation with Brigitte Felderer, alien productions, Christoph Dreager/Heidrun Holzfeind, Renate Herter, Pepi Maier
Project Director: Norbert Schweizer
Publications
Three publications are appearing in conjunction with “Tiefenrausch”: two exhibition guides and a theoretical volume by Thomas Macho, a highly regarded philosopher and scholar in the field of cultural studies.
Tiefenrausch Information Bureau:
The go-to place for info and tour reservations
OK Center for Contemporary Art
OK Platz 1, 4020 Linz
T: +43.732.784178-555, office@ok-centrum.at
www.ok-centrum.at/tiefenrausch
Project partners:
OK Center for Contemporary Art
Director: Martin Sturm
www.ok-centrum.at
Project Director: Norbert Schweizer
OK Platz 1, 4020 Linz
T: +43.732.784178
Linz 2009 – European Capital of Culture
Press Officers:
OK: Maria Falkinger, OK Platz 1, 4020 Linz, Tel: +43.732.784178-203, m.falkinger@ok-centrum.at
Linz09: Pia Leydolt, Gruberstraße 2, 4020 Linz, Tel: +43.732.2009-37, pia.leydolt@linz09.at
Tiefenrausch Weekend in Linz
2 nights stay in a 3* or 4* hotel including breakfast, Linz City Ticket, Tiefenrausch Package (Guided tour through the OK Museum of the Underworlds, admission to the exhibition in the Aktienkeller, guided tour of the crypts in the Old City, outing to the cistern or the Donaudüker tunnel and a night screening in the Moviemento art-house cinema)
Per person in a double room (3* Hotel 105, 4* Hotel 125 euros)
Information & Booking:
TouristInfo, Hauptplatz 1, 4020 Linz, Tel. +43 (0)732/7070-1777, Fax +43 (0)732/772873
e-mail: tourist.info@linz.at
Details:
Tiefenrausch – A multipart project with highlights in the OK and in the AktienkellerAktienkeller “River of Forgetting”
The Art Projects
