In our project we explore a currently empty space (of the planned Wien-Holding Arena in 1030 next to Marx Halle) as a stage, playing with emptiness as a carrier of the fantastic. We imagine the area as a blank slate where individual worlds can be created or re-created. We see it as a site of illusion, but also as an actual place of suspended time: A real-life architectural drawing where constructions constantly appear and disappear, the imagined being put into dialectical relationship with the reality of the city.
Images of the place, parts from our personal photographic archive and photographs taken in various sites of the city are situated to perform together. They take shape in the area of St. Marx, a process directed by their subject and the environment where they become. Through constantly reviewing the same spots, we build a space for our own trials. Our process is repetitive yet transforming: Cyclical elements and forms overlap with one another to perform in different ways. This method resembles the way fragments (and memories) are appropriated, transformed and layered to compose a city. However, we also reflect on the formulaic approach of building today: Its homogeneity and exclusion of divergence doesn’t allow memory to be concretised in space anymore.
We make use of the space’s limits in order to see how controlled frames constitute a potential for transformation and change. In this way we perceive it as ephemeral and constantly becoming: a space that can be grasped and remembered.
This series was created as part of the cooperative project "WIE WIR (NICHT) LEBEN" with Arbeiterkammer Vienna.
As part of the eponymous urban exhibition, which was on view from June 26 to September 1, 2024, at various locations across Vienna, I THINK I'VE SEEN THIS PLACE BEFORE was presented around the skatepark oof Freifläche St.Marx in 1030 Vienna.
