Aktienkeller “River of Forgetting”
The Exhibition
The Aktienkeller, an extensive historical tunnel system beneath Linz’s Botanical Garden, will be the setting for 25 works by artists from around the world. Their shared theme is the loss of private or political memory. A 4,000-m2 recently unused section of the tunnel system has been set up expressly for this exhibition. A well-marked path conducts visitors through this wide-ranging network of passageways—some up to six meters tall—and ends up, following a spectacular ascent, in the Botanical Garden. Visitors can navigate this parcours independently. OK art information is available on site; guided round-trip tours through the exhibits and the Limonistollen cave system will be offered on a regular basis.
History of Linz’s System of Underground Tunnels
There are about 40 tunnel systems in Linz; the Aktienkeller and the Limonistollen are among the biggest. The area of the tunnels is approximately 53,000 m2—the equivalent of seven soccer fields; the total length is 14 kilometers. The history Linz’s tunnels began with beer brewing. In the late 19th century, the Aktienbraukeller was one of numerous caves dug for the purpose of aging and storing beer. The Nazis then systematically expanded this tunnel system into a large-scale network of air-raid shelters. Inmates of the Mauthausen concentration camp were among the laborers. The Aktienkeller was set up to accommodate 8,800 persons. Beginning in 1944, these tunnels also sheltered armaments industry production facilities.
The Theme of the Exhibition
Remembering and forgetting are non-identical twins that have had a powerful impact on our cultural history. Ever since ancient Greece, Mnemosyne, the celebrated goddess of memory, has been juxtaposed to Lethe, her gray sister of forgetting. Their oppositional attitude towards one another has become entwined over the course of the centuries into a thicket that is virtually impossible to untangle.
Thus, on one hand, our Jewish-Hellenic-Christian culture is fundamentally based on a “culture of remembrance.” But just as old, on the other hand, is human longing to bathe the wounds of the past in Lethe, the river of forgetting. “Happy is he who forgets” said Alfred in the operetta “Die Fledermaus,” immortal words that give an easily accessible, rather maudlin expression to this a wish. Modern scientists have also focused on the brain’s capacity to forget. “The sum of our insights consists of that which we’ve learned and of that which we’ve forgotten,” is how Maria von Ebner-Eschenbach put it.
With psychoanalysis’ introduction of the concept of repression, this point of view was decisively expanded. A particularly high level of intensity and political explosiveness has infused the debate about remembering, repressing and forgetting conducted before the backdrop of attempts to exterminate entire peoples during the time of National Socialism.
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