Symposion LindabrunnA place to be for contemporary Art and Discourse in a nature environment
Symposion Lindabrunn
“Ecological resilience is the amount of disturbance a system can withstand before it transitions to another state.”
The Limits of Resilience is organized by guest curators Malin Walleser (media artist, carpenter) and Felix Gaulhofer (ecologist). Together with various artists, ecologists, musicians, scientific and non-scientific researchers, they will address the urgent topic of resilience
in socio-ecological systems. It is intended to be a place for critical debate and research. The program includes visual art such as site-specific installations, watercolours and sculptures, performances, concerts and sound art, discussion formats, artist talks and workshops.
CURATORIAL APPROACH
In 1973, Canadian ecologist C.S. Holling defined ecological resilience as the amount of disturbance a system can withstand before transitioning to a different state. In 2000, the British human geographer Neil Adger described social resilience as the ability of human communities to withstand external shocks to their social infrastructure, such as environmental fluctuations or social, economic and political upheaval. However, resilience is also the ability to live on in the face of change and emphasizes the need to accept change and adaptation as a fundamental property of systems in order to maintain continuity, rather than assuming stability and trying to rationalize deviations from it. How much disruption can a system withstand? How far can a system adapt before it becomes an abolition? How fast can change be so that it is still tolerable? Resilient systems are able to restructure themselves and rely on dynamic learning and development processes. In order to imagine the future and develop new narratives, we need to work together with art and culture. In this way, people can be taken on a journey of transformation.
Marie Vermont: The common landscape of Lindabrunn (watercolors, audio)
Jakob Schauer: A resilient sound-map (outdoor sound installation)
Heidi Trimmel: Solutions I: communication (installation)
Hannah Todt/ Jules Flamen: o.T. (site-specific installation)
Claudia Rohrauer: Workshop and presentation of plant photo developers
Felix Gaulhofer/ Malin Walleser: o.T. (outdoor installation)
Saturday:
14:00 Opening
15:00 Walkabout Landschaftspflegeverein
15:00 – 20:00 SOUNA heat wave (Theresa Stroetges/ Wiebke Frerichs/ Malin Walleser)
17:00 decolonial discussion and artistic practice (Mekhala Dave)
19:00 Dinner
20:00 Djonni Laser live (Arena)
21:00 Heidi Trimmel (Arena)
22:00 Nadeshda (Arena)
Sunday:
12:30 Tour
14:00 Interactive lecture Activism & Resilience (Irene Nemeth)
15:00 – 18:00 SOUNA heat wave (Theresa Stroetges/ Wiebke Frerichs/ Malin Walleser)
15:30 Performative exploration with multispecies habitat interventions (Isa Klee)
18:00 Open discussion (with Heidi Trimmel/ Mekhala Dave)
Data collected, saved, postponed. Observed, measured and structured values on a specific issue. Raw data systematized, analysed and interpreted. The context is the purpose. The processing is its meaning. Subjective data processing is distorted. And what does it look like there? Is it the utopia that awaits there, or the gloomy downfall? Have we taken it too far? Opportunity squandered. The frenzy of adaptation and the hysteria of change may heal us or destroy us. Perhaps we will only know when we have gone one step too far.
Artistic processing of data collected according to scientific methodology.
Heidi Trimmel creates a system-analytical map of the human-environment relationship in which decisive variables are defined and linked. Balancing and reinforcing cycles become visible. This map forms the basis for discussion about where forces should best be focused or released in order to achieve a (re)integration with nature. In Heidi’s opinion, a renegotiation of the social contract that forms the basis of modern society must also include animate and inanimate nature.
A collection of sounds and field recordings is spread out over an open space as a spatial soundscape that can only be entered with headphones. The result is a hybrid situation with a physical location and a virtual soundscape that restructures it acoustically.
Sounds are assigned to specific areas in the room and present themselves as a spatial composition and accessible sound environment. They are distributed over the entire area and can be entered, walked through and left again.
“Experiencing by walking” is the central reception behavior of the visitors to this sound work, whereby physical movement and the covering of paths determines the temporal course of the experience.
Strolling and listening and being guided by the emerging sound bubbles creates individual listening experiences for each visitor.
The sounds themselves will be a collection of field recordings and synthesized sounds that behave like sound clouds, overlapping, mixing and complementing each other. The installation cannot be heard without or outside the headphones. A tracking system on each headphone determines the position of each visitor and enables position-dependent sound playback for each person in the installation.
The performative walk or sculptural intervention with a focus on wild bees, insects and small mammals is intended to highlight ecological connections and make it possible to experience one’s own role in the ecosystem in a new way through small interventions. Human interventions in the landscape are thematized, reflected upon and new approaches to landscape and sculpture are tested.
The communication center, which looks like a classic amphitheater made of natural stone, is intended to be the stage and thus the experiential space for the live performance in the open air. Visible but decentralized, the so-called arena will be played with Djonni Laser’s instruments and the corresponding equipment. The focus will be on the idea of a place of gathering and exchange. The listeners sit in a circle on different levels and can experience the intensity and quality of the sounds from each position through specially aligned loudspeakers. Neoclassical, partly polyrhythmic piano playing based on “continuous music” is accompanied by spherical, noise sounds and the voice sometimes serves as noise, sometimes as an instrument. The focus is on the sound experience. Resilience should be experienced as an empowering state in the group process. An emotional and real borderline experience and border crossing is approached in a musical way in order to generate the moment of a shared, profound process.
A cassette loop performance deals with the exploration of the resilience of cassette tapes. It attempts to break the boundaries of the medium (on a mechanical and musical level). I am trying to reach a point where the emotional and beautiful endurance of the music and recordings evolves into a fractured and harsh sound. A performance that creates a sense of tension in which the hypnotic and continuous sound of repetition, despite the breaking of the recordings and a fit of discomfort, retains its beauty.
In around 90 minutes, we will move from the definition of the term and general reflections on activism and resilience to a specific project where people have become active.after a brief review of the history of the controversial street project and the legal steps, we will look at which initiatives have been formed, which activities have been undertaken and which creative inputs have emerged. We look at how cooperation between a citizens’ movement and activists can work, what synergies there are and where sticking points or conflicts can arise, report on strategies and speculate on whether or where the term “resilience” can be applied at all. Working on this project revealed hidden talents in the protagonists. Whether this creativity already touches on the field of art remains to be seen.
The residency in Lindabrunn gives us the opportunity to view resilience as fluctuating, to understand change not in terms of progress, but to focus on its malleability, which is not necessarily goal-oriented. With ephemeral interventions, we want to mobilize our imagination through non-scientific research and playful experimentation. We want to facilitate an interactive relationship with our environment that moves beyond the antagonistic relationship of exploitation and canonization of nature. This means that we demand a space for improvisation, experimentation and failure and understand the environment as a space to be explored curiously and playfully. With our approach, we want to animate areas of the site poetically, but also practically. Through improvised gestures, ephemeral performative interventions, usable furniture that builds on the existing landscape, using the many resources, structures and materials that can be found in Lindabrunn. The interventions will be documented, filmed and made accessible to the public in the form of a video installation on the weekend of the symposium.
…using the example of a local initiative against a road project, the Wiener Neustadt eastern bypass
In around 90 minutes, we will move from the definition of the term and general reflections on activism and resilience to a specific project where people have become active.after a brief review of the history of the controversial street project and the legal steps, we will look at which initiatives have been formed, which activities have been undertaken and which creative inputs have emerged. We look at how cooperation between a citizens’ movement and activists can work, what synergies there are and where sticking points or conflicts can arise, report on strategies and speculate on whether or where the term “resilience” can be applied at all. Working on this project revealed hidden talents in the protagonists. Whether this creativity already touches on the field of art remains to be seen.
