There they lie, like tumbled columns, cut-down urban trees
from Vienna, in a green sitting bay amid an otherwise sealed urban area. Shapes are milled cut into the trunks: development
curves that illustrate our warped relationship with nature.
Growth rings are the natural chronicle
of a tree’s life. The robot-milled curves, however, illustrate human interference in nature: statistical data on the rising
milk production of Austrian cows, for example, or the spreading use of snow-cannon systems, or the increasing sealing of soils.
These developments are closely related. They are based on regional, global, political and individual decisions. They are both
causes and symptoms of a crisis that is slow in the making but sure to come.
The trees lying there on Kramreiterweg
once were life-bearers, air purifiers, and climate regulators. They had to give way to the urban sprawl. Displaced by concrete
and asphalt. Sickened by nutrient depletion and fungal infestation. Nature is made to conform to humans for short-term profit
and comfort. This alignment has uncomfortable consequences in the long term. Also for us. Can we still turn around?
Venue: Kramreiterweg, 1210 Vienna
Duration: May 2022–spring 2023
Picnic at the installation
Kramreiterweg
4 June at 5 pm
Dóra Medveczky, b.
1990 in Budapest (HU), and Fabio Spink, b. 1991 in Heiden (CH), live in Vienna.
Financial support:
KÖR Kunst im Öffentlichen Raum Wien, City of Vienna
Thanks to: MA 42 – Parks and Gardens,
University of Applied Arts Vienna (Angewandte Robotics Lab und Holztechnologie, Masterstudiengang Social Design), Antonio
Airelli, Sina Gerschwiler, Philipp Hornung, Florian Kläger, Nina Kreuzinger, Pascal Rathgeb, Philipp Reinsberg, David Schessl,
Anna Vasof
Further information
