Der kranke Hase / The Ill Rabbit
Copyright: Clemens Kogler
“The Ill Rabbit//Crazy About Linz” was meant to open up new possibilities of perception and experience for people in the Capital of Culture, to enable them to test their tolerance and to change habitual patterns, to get more enjoyment out of life, and to make Linz a bit crazier. The big question: “How much craziness can one province take?”
The Ill Rabbit—a fairytale figure from the Pöstlingberg Grotto Railway—made the rounds in Linz, and with him, questions about habits, things that give us apparent security, about the boundaries of being sick and being alive, about sympathy, impatience and being irritated. What this all amounted to was a very creative way of approaching the subject of psychosocial health.
In Spring 2009, the project kicked off with an eccentric opening spectacle in Linz’s Volksgarten park, which was also the setting of its grand finale in October. At exhibitions in KunstRaum xtd and installations in public spaces as well as in communications offerings that gave folks an opportunity to get actively involved, The Ill Rabbit—with a little help from his artistically gifted friends from Finland, Estonia, Switzerland, Germany and Austria—made the crazy state of affairs in the Capital of Culture something that everyone could see and experience.
WHAT // exhibitions, installations, interventions
WHEN // March – October 2009
WHERE // Public spaces, KunstRaum Goethestrasse xtd
www.derkrankehase09.com
IDEA / CONCEPT / REALISATION // Susanne Blaimschein, Beate Rathmayr/ KunstRaum Goethestrasse xtd
CARTOON CHARACTERS // Clemens Kogler
PARTICIPANTS // Astrid Benzer, Christoph Mayer, Marko Mäetamm, Karin Fisslthaler, Tea Mäkipää, Lottie Child, Anja Vormann/Gunnar Friel, Anne Lorenz, freundinnen der kunst, Beate Göbel, Thomas Pohl
Video by Clemens Kogler
Download:
The ill Rabitt: Programme August - October 2009 (PDF)„Im Garten des kranken Hasen“
Der Garten des kranken Hasen
Copyright: Andreas Kepplinger
“In the Garden of the Ill Rabbit”
by Judith Richter/Mario Sinnhofer/A
The opening event for the ill rabbit kicks off on Saturday, March 21 at 1 PM in KunstRaum Goethestrasse xtd with the opening of the bunny’s home base: a volcano amidst a surreal landscape. The mouth of the volcano is the entrance to his burrow. We can only hope that this actually remains the Grotto Railway refugee’s new home. In any case, this home base will host the premiere of a promotion clip by Clemens Kogler, creator of The Ill Rabbit graphics.
“In the Garden of the Ill Rabbit”– 2-6 PM in Volksgarten
Volksgarten morphs into the Garden of the Ill Rabbit and thus into an arena of remarkable stories. Here, wacky occurrences and strange circumstances will be declaimed for others to hear—occasionally loud and amplified, sometimes soft in an intimate setting, from on high or person-to-person. To wit: those wild and crazy stories that were submitted over the preceding weeks to The Ill Rabbit in response to the call for people to “Write Stories!” Whereby the word “crazy” is used here in the sense of the out-of-the-ordinary, off the charts, intensely felt as well as “your common, everyday nuttiness.” Garden visitors can bring their narratives along with them or write them down here.
Pluck Stories and Enjoy Musical Refreshment. People without stories can pluck text-filled sheets of paper from surrounding trees. “Maul-& Trommelseuche,” a duo with 50 different Jew’s harps, plays intermezzi. A one-man-show (whose agent says he’s really good) purveys oldies amidst the foliage.
A performance on the subject of “The Ill Rabbit’s fabulous affinities to other members of the animal kingdom” and to human-animal hybrid forms dreamed up somewhere within the mental landscapes on the loose in the Linz art scene establishes a surreal atmosphere reminiscent of The March Hare’s tea party in Alice in Wonderland. These affinities have spun off a number of interactive installations that garden visitors are cordially invited to try out themselves. Judith Richter and Mario Sinnhofer developed the idea and concept of the “In the Garden of the Ill Rabbit” art project.
Tree House and Cabanas. Gunar Wilhelm and Tobias Hagleitner’s “Tree House,” a life-filled duplex platform right in the middle of Volksgarten, opens with a performance. The “Cabanas. Modular Prefab Sculptures for Cities” by Anja Vormann and Gunnar Friel, will have already been in use for hours at this point.
Category: Public Space
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