Reverse Imagining Vienna
Anthropogenic Mass and Its Speculative Futures
Angewandte Interdisciplinary Lab
This exhibition is part of Klima Biennale 2024
Since 2020, the global stock of man-made mass has exceeded the total sum of biomass on Earth – around
90 percent of which is building materials. In the project Reverse Imagining Vienna, two sculptors and nine writers took a
Viennese Gründerzeit building and the Prater Bridge, which crosses over the Danube, as material and speculative anchors in
which to gain perspectives on sustainable relationships with inanimate matter. Referring to so-called reverse engineering,
the two structures were deconstructed and recomposed in a historical, material-analytical, poetic and visionary way using
reverse imagining.
Over a two year period, the project brought together national and international
experts from the disciplines of geology, physics, ecology, urban morphology, transport sciences, evolutionary biology, literature
and sculpture. The nine anthropogenic materials most relevant to the case studies were identified and analyzed in terms of
cultural history, environmental science and social metabolism, from extraction to recycling management and emissions. Samples
of material allowed conclusions to be drawn about their respective origins; the geological formation and potential futures
were discussed in lectures by the participating scientists and contextualized for further speculative processing. In this
way, images of varied futures were created with a time horizon that extends from the present and spans into the geological
distance.
The exhibition Reverse Imagining Vienna is the final presentation of the artistic research project of the same
name. Sculptures, scientific analyses of the nine anthropogenic materials and the first volume of a publication containing
the resulting literary contributions are on display. Four readings by the participating authors will take place as part of
the exhibition.
Writers:
Ann Cotten, Elias Hirschl, Jakob Pretterhofer, Julia Grillmayr,
Fiston Mwanza Mujila, Neslihan Yakut, Nika Pfeifer, Veronika Franz & Severin Fiala
Scientists:
Angelika Psenner, Barbara Laa, Filipa L. Sousa, Fridolin Krausmann, Jan Zalasiewicz, Johannes Weber, Josepha Edbauer, Michael
Wagreich, Peter Fichtinger, Sebastian Hafner, Tanja Traxler, Tess Posch
Project management and sculpure:
Christoph
Weber, Nikolaus Eckhard
SIDE PROGRAM
Reading Nights (starting 18:30)
8 May with
Jakob Pretterhofer, Fiston Mwanza Mujila
with performance by Nikolaus Eckhard and friends afterwards
15 May with
Julia Grillmayr, Nika Pfeifer
22 May with Neslihan Yakut, Ann Cotten
29 May with Veronika Franz, Severin Fiala,
Elias Hirschl
Opening hours:
Mon–Fri: 11:00–18:00
Extra Saturday: 4 May, 10:00–18:00