Exhibition Review by Adriana Marques

Tag der offenen Tür (Day of the Open Door)
Flakturm Arenbergpark, Vienna
15 – 30, June 2006
50 artists

In the middle of a small Viennese park stand a pair of solid concrete towers, like windowless office blocks, both reaching 50 metres skyward. One remains unmarked, and children play round its base as if it wasn’t there. From the other hangs a chain of knotted clothes resembling a make-shift escape rope, a large P shines from a red light-box on the wall, designating a supposed multi-story car park within, and the whining of air-raid sirens and bomber planes emanates from a small door at the side. On hearing these sounds, suddenly the original purpose of these imposing structures comes crashing home, and these pointed interventions by local artists begin to make more sense.
In 1942, these two monoliths, and a series of others that dot Vienna and several German cities, were commissioned by Hitler’s sweeping dictatorship as ammunition bunkers and gun defence towers for the Luftwaffe to prevent attacks by the Allied bombers. These ‘Flakturms’ were built with walls of reinforced concrete nearly four metres thick, and stood then as indestructible markers of a protective nation. Two generations later, slightly scuffed but still indestructible, these relics from a shunned era remain empty, (save for an aquarium and art storage facility in two other Flakturms in Vienna), failing to capture the imagination of cultural developers.
However, in the most unlikely of disused spaces, such as this Flakturm VII L-tower in Arenberg Park, Vienna boasts a discretely vibrant art scene to be envious of. Inside, a collective exhibition, Tag der offenen Tür (Day of the Open Door), presents eight storeys of barely lit, dusty corridors with new works from 50 of Vienna’s most promising artists. Although the installations appear rough and lack a visible curatorial narrative, these artists have independently come together to open this historic building to the public for the second time in 60 years, providing a powerful collective impetus to revitalise its morbid history.

Coelestine Engels’ string of knotted clothes, Rette Sich Wer Kann (Save Yourself if You Can, 2006), first seen scaling the wall outside, continues inside to wind its way past your feet, up the repressive stairwell, sleeve tied to sleeve, tied to trouser leg, tied to another sleeve, while the painful historic sound-score of air-raids and bomber planes by Christian Camille, Schutz (Protection, 2006), pierces the silence from the depths of the broken lift shaft. In the refrigerated atmosphere of a damp artillery storage room on the third floor, a dead, deteriorating bird lies against a mirror, by Bessie Nager and Frederike Schweizer, projects silhouettes of the animal’s half visible bones onto the concrete ceiling by an interrogating spotlight.

Perhaps inside the walls of this dark obelisk that still serves as a ghost of a poignant past, these works could be assailed for their obvious references to old traumas, until further down the corridor, a simple projection, O.T. (2005), by artist Ruben Aubrecht, shows a single virtual hair, which relentlessly flutters against the concrete wall, while outside, the constantly shining parking-lot ‘P’, Parkturm (Carpark, 2006) by Mario Neugebauer, alludes to a comforting sense of modern day functionality, and geophones installed throughout the building by established media artist Judith Fegerl, Inside the Whale (2006), record sounds conducted through the concrete walls, and metaphorically begin to dissolve the barriers of this harsh structure. It is unyielding works such as these that represent a tenacious and creative new generation in Austria’s capital.

This conviction of Vienna’s emerging artists, who literally squatted in this emotionally charged building for the two weeks of the exhibition, is spoken most directly by the blunt work of Markus Hafner, one of the last works to be encountered in this vertical warren of installations. On the roof, where 8.8 calibre AA guns used to violently discharge, Hafner has laid out a simple five metre wide swastika with Vienna’s finest bread loaves: an innocent offering to the birds who know no better. In a parody of the strictly enforced Austrian law, Wiederbetätigung, which forbids the re-enactment or promotion of any remote association with the National Socialist party, this work epitomises the unflinching position of this communal exhibition, which essentially strives to challenge visual historical stereotypes.

Viewing the baroque Viennese urbanscape from Hafner’s swastika on the roof, it is easy to see how the Nazi dictatorship had envisaged a proud legacy for their Flakturms, with triumphant plans to convert the coarse concrete facades into marble-clad public monuments, presenting golden portraits of Hitler. It is however, in recalling his 1937 speech at the opening of the ‘Degenerate Art’ exhibition in Munich, where the National Socialist Party exhibited representative works of avant-garde art as evidence of corruption, madness and cultural bolshevism, that such a progressive exhibition of contemporary visual art in these now defunct structures, effectively serves as an inspiring neutraliser of a dark history.

Adriana Marques is the curator of the Visual Arts Platform at the Austrian Cultural Forum, London.

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