As part of the Ö1 focus on "In the River - Danube", Kunstradio presents the legendary project "Landscape Soundings" by Bill Fontana. In 1990, for fourteen days, live sounds and tones emanated from the Stopfenreuter Au near Hainburg. The soundscape of the Danube wetlands was transmitted to 70 loudspeakers with the help of 16 microphones and directional radio. These were mounted on the facades and in the cupolas of the Kunst- and the Naturhistorisches Museum and brought the undisturbed nature of the Stophenreuter Au at Maria-Theresien Platz in Vienna to life in an unusual way.

Landscape Soundings revisited
by Bill Fontana

In 2020, Bill Fontana put together a new mix of the original recordings of "Landscape Soundings" as an acoustic meditation and dreamscape for an exhibition at Berlin's Gropius Bau.

Wetland
by Adina Camhy und Katrin Euller

Ö1 Kunstradio commissioned two young artists, Adina Camhy and Katrin Euller, to create a new remix from the recordings of two Kunstradio Live broadcasts of the "Landscape Soundings" project from 1990.

Wetland relates Bill Fontana's "Landscape Soundings" to current climate protests in Vienna - around the now cancelled construction of the Lobautunnel and the planned city road. Excerpts from Fontana's work were heavily altered by the artists using machines and effects devices, combined with voices from the Ö1 broadcast Hörbilder "Kampf um den Lobautunnel" and chants from the global climate movement. Recordings from the Hainburger Au (1990), distorted to the point of unfamiliarity, collide with impressions from the protest camp of the LobauBleibt movement.

The resulting piece portrays a contested landscape whose ecosystems are once again under threat from current construction plans as well as from the effects of the climate crisis. Wetland is also a portrait of a generation shaped by fears and anxieties about the future, and driven by the urgency to change things together.

Hainburg is everywhere.

Wetland is the second collaboration by Adina Camhy and Katrin Euller after the radio piece Droneland (Ö1 Kunstradio 2022).

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