in resonanz
This work foregrounds the experience of an interaction with street and urban space as a stage. Following Hartmut Rosa‘s sociologically coined concept of resonance, an attempt is made to approach the relationship between people and the world, specifically between people and urban space. Unavailability and indeterminacy are key words in this approach. This will be worked out analytically in the context of existing actions in public space by Austrian artists‘ and architects‘ groups. The focus here is clearly on the city of Vienna, where new thinking in the form of actions and sculptural works in public space was already evident in the mid-1970s with the architectural group Missing Link or an artist like Valie Export. Parallel to this approach, this book will also present specially developed actions and works in Vienna‘s street space, which are intended to expand the artistic context in this field and seek a contemporary confrontation with the concept of resonance. The considerations here range from humanly performative actions to sculpturally shaped objects placed in urban space, which could be considered at the crossroads of art, society and architecture.
The aim of this work is perhaps to demonstrate the dimensions and levels of experience in which people move through streets and urban spaces and enter into a connection, an interaction and a possible resonance with them. The question really is: when we leave our flats and houses, our places of retreat, how are we placed in this world? And what influences us in the process?