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Austria at the World Expo 2008:
Approaching the issue of water through interactive art
Inside the Austrian Pavilion at the World Fair 2008 in Zaragoza, Spain, representatives of the country’s art scene are showing a unique interpretation on the Expo theme of “Water and Sustainable Development,” running until September 14. The giant-sized installations and projections, together with multimedia performances that unite artists, dancers and designers alike, are giving visitors an authentic look at Austria’s creative scene.
“World Fairs seem to have long lost their utopian edge,” explains ART&IDEA’s Robert Punkenhofer, executive director of Austria´s presence at Expo 2008 in regard to the curatorial challenge. “Thus, we have invited some of the most critical and visionary artists to reflect on the theme of water and sustainable development in the context of the Austrian pavilion concept developed by the architecture collective Strauss Solid Ritter. Site specific interventions by Tomas Eller, Liquid Loft, Walter Niedermayr, Lucy and Jorge Orta as well as Erwin Redl very effectively interfere with the overwhelming Expo environment, renegotiate our collective understanding of water as an ever more scarce resource and encourage more than half a million visitors to become interactively involved.”
Walter Niedermayr: Pitztal Glacier 5/1997
The accomplished interplay of art and architecture begins outside the pavilion, as seen on the building’s façade. Large photographs of ice and snow landscapes on Pitztal Glacier by Walter Niedermayr, including both summer and winter scenes, are printed onto moveable slats. Some images depict tourists on the glacier in life-size scale and thus establish a relationship between reality and virtuality, as visitors of the Austrian Pavilion become “interactive extras” within each scene.
Lucy + Jorge Orta: OrtaWater Zillie Fluvial Unit
The artist duo Lucy + Jorge Orta created a special sculpture using everyday objects, photographs, welded items and natural objects, as a tangible expression on issues related to water. Entitled OrtaWater Zille Fluvial Unit, the work playfully and accessibly conveys the artists’ key message: namely, the need for more active involvement in expanding awareness for the world’s coming water problems, and for the development of sustainable solutions to combat them. The work unites the traditional Zille canoe found in Austria’s mountain lakes and rivers with an organic steel construction; and, inside, the flat structure contains hundreds of bottles, hoses and pipes. On certain days, the tanks connected to the sculpture are filled with Austrian water to provide refreshment for visitors.
liquid.loft: Winter Sun
Amidst the water-related and natural landscapes inside the pavilion, visitors encounter the performance art group liquid.loft. Under the guidance of choreographer Chris Haring, this renowned artist collective has created a wrap-around video projection entitled Winter Sun featuring specially developed light and sound elements. Central to the performance is a large “walk-in” snowball – in allusion to this popular Austrian winter “souvenir.” Depending on the viewing perspective, the snowball’s artificial, moveable biosphere has the appearance of a high-tech “climate-zone object” or simulated “amniotic bubble.” From inside, the artists interact with visitors. Meanwhile, outside the snowball, the large projections permit everyone present to become integrated into the abstract scenery – be it a glacier meadow, sunflower field or mountain lake. Visitors who wish to enter the snowball may don one of the special outfits created especially for the purpose by the young designer collective “house
of the very”.
An additional scenario within the overall performance installation is the Walk of Fame, a path leading up to the viewer platform in the exhibition space. Its multimedia elements include portraits of Austrian everyday personalities, as well as artistic video stills focusing on the Expo theme of water.
Erwin Redl: SPEED SHIFT, Zaragoza light and sound installation
The light and sound installation on display in the Lounge of the Austrian Pavilion was created by multimedia artist Erwin Redl, with the intention being to challenge conventional perceptions of time and space. Redl’s work features two ribbons of white LEDs installed along the floor and ceiling. Based on computer-controlled changes in LED brightness, wave-like patterns of light emerge that run counter to each other and lend motion to the space. The constantly altering tempo of the waves recalls the motion of water, thus also reflecting the theme of the Expo 2008. As for the sound component, gentle beeping tones in synch with the two wave patterns provide an audible indication of the changing speed of the waves. To visitors, it seems as if the ceiling and floor are afloat.
Tomas Eller: BLUE SKIN
BLUE SKIN, a film by Tomas Eller, is being projected on 15 monitors in time-staggered fashion, along the path that leads up to the pavilion arena. The film shows repeating one-minute sequences of mountain climbers amidst icy, glacial landscapes, with viewers being immediately drawn in by the combination of uniform movements, the monotone droning of a helicopter and the sound of water. Eller has broken down the filmed images of three-dimensional spaces into sequences of individual surfaces, ultimately creating a fragmentary visual language that reveals the mountain climbers’ attempt at mastering their environment as nothing more than futile. A limited-edition art book to accompany the film BLUE SKIN is scheduled to be released in September. The work will feature drawings of the actions taking place on the glacier, combined with cartographic representations of mountain lakes and photos of bodily fluids taken through a microscope.
Austria´s Expo presence is directed by ART&IDEA´s Robert Punkenhofer on behalf of the Austrian Federal Ministry of Economics and Labour and the Federal Economic Chamber. For more information on Expo 2008 and the Austrian pavilion, please visit www.expoaustria.at
For further information about ART&IDEA and its programmes, please explore this website. To get information and order the recent Hatje Cantz book and special edition ART&IDEA – connecting different worlds, with works by Vito Acconci, Santiago Sierra, Teresa Margolles and others, please contact Reanne Leuning.