The New Austria (2005)

In 2005, Austria celebrated its 50 years of independence. For this occasion, an exhibition about 100 years of Austrian history was shown in the Belvedere palace in Vienna. At its centre: the original Treaty of Independence.

This exhibition was designed by three parties: an exhibition designer got the left walls of the exhibition space to develop a system for exhibiting objects, artefacts and documents explaining and contextualising the Austrian history. The right wall had been given to an art curator to exhibit 100 years of Austrian art. The space between the walls and between design and art (literally and metaphorically) was given to ART+COM. For this, the Berlin studio designed a 250 meters long Austrian flag. The concept was to use the flag as a narrator to explain and comment on the national history. The flag was extended by weaving 17 media installations into it.

"Ear-trumpet"
The ear-trumpet allows visitors to listen into the flag to hear original recordings from politicians from the first decade of the last century, i.e. Emperor Franz Joseph I.

"Slide fabric"
Slides from World War I were woven into the fabric and can be seen with the help of magnifying glasses, creating a very intimate situation to view these brutal pictures.

"Stepping onto the Wehrmacht"
In 1938 Austria became a part of Germany and lost its flag. This is shown on one hand by the transformation to a grey flag and on the other by projecting a bird’s eye view of marching Wehrmacht soldiers. The projection being placed at a doorway, people are forced to march with and on them. Between the gate posts loudspeakers transmit the sound of the marching boots.

"Fabric keyboard"
On this part of the flag a keyboard is projected. Visitors can touch keys and get explanations of keywords dealing with the post war occupation of Austria.

"Bow in front of the flag"
In the flag loudspeakers are implemented. The sound is so low that the visitors have to go very close. This looks like if they are bowing in front of the flag. With this we are staging the visitors as a part of the exhibition.

"The Treaty of Independence"
The Treaty of Independence was shown the first time in Austria (it belongs to the Russians who signed it last). It is exhibited in the center hall of the round trip. In respect to this artifact the flag has no media extension in this space.

"Quote ticker"
LED strips are woven into the flag showing quotes from the most important Austrian literature.

"Bowl of clichés"
In the north east corner room, the flag goes into a giant abstract bowl and becomes virtual. It behaves like noodles in a soup and people can stir it. By doing this they find terms representing clichés. By touching them an explanation with pictures and text appears.

"Economy info sculpture"
In this space the flag becomes a sculpture representing the gross national product over the last century compared to the European GNP.

"Flag camera"
An old super-8 camera was mounted on a slide and pointing into the flag. With this interface visitors can browse old private movies which are then projected onto the flag.

"Flag microscope"
This space was dedicated to the relation between Europe, Austria and the individual. To translate this into an installation a table in the form of Europe was built. The flag cuts through this and is only visible on the Austrian area. By looking into the microscope pointing at the flag, the visitors see Europe from space and by turning the microscopes focus wheel they trigger a flight from space to Europe, Austria, Vienna, the Belvedere, flying through the roof and ending by seeing them self through a camera zoom attached to the ceiling.

The New Austria was a joint project between ART+COM, Martin Kohlbauer (architect) and Wolfgang Luser.

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