Intro

The Floridsdorf elevated railroad crosses the north of Vienna as a remarkable building structure. This single-track railroad line built in concrete construction with viaducts and steel bridges, is often called the "Italienerschleife". It had been built in 1916 by Italian forced laborers in order to speed up arms transports: a north-west railroad / north railway line span of four and a half kilometers. The Italian war prisoner camp Sigmundsherberg in the Waldviertel was the largest in the disintegrating monarchy. Nowadays, this functional line is used several times a day exclusively by transport trains.

Standing at the elevated Siemensstraße train station, we have the best overview, because it exists on a level with the "Italienerschleife" including its Wander-Bertoni memorial erected in 1999. There culminate also historical as well as today's buildings, infrastructures, traffic routes, employers, companies.

Therefore, this station is also the starting point for the art project "Schleifen, Dichten" by Gertrude Moser-Wagner, in collaboration with Kunst im öffentlichen Raum Wien. She focuses on historical backgrounds in poetic reinterpretation of existing elements - such as memorial and loop, signal box and rail - as a question about the experience of WORK. The term track is etymologically related to effort, and it also means: to draw a track.

Moser-Wagner's new artistic work "Balance Ost" is a collective walking on the track, including loss of balance. The third part of this year-long project with colleagues takes place as a performative May 1st "exit" from Siemensstraße (performance at Heizhaus Strasshof, Emel Heinreich and team).

Kunstradio

The present Kunstradio "schleifen (ver)dichten" is a continuative work with Josef Reiter and also takes as its starting point the place it acoustically processes.

The source material for the piece are Reiter's field recordings and soundscapes, recorded in the surroundings of the "Italienerschleife" in Viennas Floridsdorf and sounds of a prepared double bass as well as of railroad tracks, which while being recorded were brought to sound with the use of different materials. This sound material is, partly electronically processed, in its various sonic properties, set against each other as well as interwoven with each other - atmospheric loops - noises are transformed into music and vice versa.

Two further levels are included - on the one hand there are spoken passages of passers-by from the sound work "Akustischer Erinnerungsspeicher" by Wally Rettenbacher. A collection of comments on the questions she asked in and around the Siemensstraße station, described by her as poetological localizations.

On the other hand, there are photographs from Italy by Gertrude Moser-Wagner, who years ago dealt with Ventotene as the cradle of the European idea (keyword: Manifesto di Ventotene) and now has the offshore prison island of Santo Stefano described by a historian. This listing is interspersed with a reading of youthful and female voices from the book "Schicksal Kriegsgefangenschaft" by Dr. Rudolf Koch, who in his dissertation dealt more deeply with Sigmundsherberg, his birthplace and thus the former prison camp.

Outro

We thought that European wars were behind us, because welfare, consumption, self-determination, democracy, along with a prospering economy - accompanied by global networking but also profit maximization and outsourcing of labor - would automatically result in social peace. But already the experience of the Covid pandemic with its egocentric concept of freedom and other upheavals has unsettled us in this. However, now wars are catching up with us in an unbearable way, such as the one in Ukraine, which was part of the monarchy in the last century with Eastern Galicia - and leave open questions upon questions: those about the European model of thought, military defense, future work for all, land consumption, dwindling resources - in short:

Seemingly already solved questions - about setting a course, where the train of time is going, condense into multiple loops....

The signal box at the station is and remains a symbolic place: TRUE FACTS ARENA (Natalie Deewan).

Excerpts from: Rudolf Koch, „Schicksal Kriegsgefangenschaft, Das Kriegsgefangenenlager Sigmundsherberg“, 2015 Verlag Berger (1. Auflage)

PROGRAM
CALENDAR