The video Postludium is an obituary for the former gasworks area in Augsburg/ Oberhausen. It shows a ghostlike dance in the empty rooms of the building especially of a historical disc-type gasometer, built in 1915, and another recent disc-type gasometer (“Gaskessel”). This work raises the question of whether a building has a memory and thus also an identity.
The sound piece “Echoes of Industry” is a production by Gerald Fiebig and Christian Z. Müller. It was recorded in the “Gaskessel”.
2015 / 2019, Joint project with Gerald Fiebig, sound produced for ORF Kunstradio, premiere 27.12.2015, 22:30 min
“25 years after the end of the Cold War, the political distance between Western Europe (e.g. Austria) and Eastern Europe (e.g. Romania) seems to be increasing again in many respects. But this distorts the fact that there is a lot of shared history, which already becomes evident when looking at the parallels between the cities of Vienna and Timisoara. For their piece Utopia lives next door, the authors move through both cities, inspired by the situationist concept of psychogeographical examination of urban environments by means of “dérive” the deliberately drifting walk through a city. The starting point of the excursions are the quarters Innere Stadt and Josefstadt – due to the shared history, both Vienna and Timisoara have districts with these names. From the field recordings thus collected, the authors compose the soundscape of a utopian city in which the difference between West and East has been erased. Woven into the composition are voice recordings from interviewees recalling instances of lived solidarity under difficult social and political circumstances in Vienna and Timisoara during different phases of the 20th century. Based on shared thematic motifs, the quotes are arranged into a quasi-dialogic relation to each other that offers a glimpse of the possibilities that were at hand, but were missed in the actual history of Austria and Romania. The speakers are Friederike Brenner (born in 1923 in Mödling near Vienna) and Johann Kassnel (born 1932 in Jahrmarkt near Timisoara).” (Gerald Fiebig)
An exhibition by Eri Kassnel, Jakob Krattiger and Gerald Fiebig
27.01. – 28.03.2017, New Gallery in the Höhmannhaus Augsburg
“Contrary to popular usage, places are not only determined by their location in space, but also in time. This exhibition presents three artistic positions that start from the (photographic or auditory) documentation of real places. What all positions have in common is that they integrate the spatially clearly defined place into a process that shows: the place has different identities depending on the time in which one perceives it.” Gerald Fiebig
