auto-exkursion II
In 2001, the Institute for Art and Design organized the first auto-excursion – an experimental format that dissolved the conventional boundaries between studio, street, and gallery. Building on this tradition, "hurry hurry, cretto burri" transforms automobile travel into a continuous production loop, where material and technology become formal conditions during the journey. The mobile studio becomes an infrastructural shift: trunk as darkroom, dashboard as work surface, rearview mirror as compositional aid. The production conditions of art are coupled to the speed of the highway, to rest stops and gas stations – an enrichment that replaces stationary work with the dynamics of movement and opens new aesthetic possibilities between analog and digital, between positive and negative.
The journey leads to Cretto Burri, that multifaceted place on the island of Sicily, which is simultaneously memorial site, landscape of memory, cemetery, and land art installation. Here, where Alberto Burri created his monumental work as a response to destruction, grief and transformation meet. The empathetic approach to these formats requires particular sensitivity: How does one work artistically at a place that is already itself artwork and memorial? How does one's own production relate to this existing intervention? The planned final exhibition on site becomes a confrontation with the history of the place and a reflection on the role of contemporary art in historical contexts.
The car does not necessarily have to be used as a means of transportation. The appropriate choice or combination of means of transport, depending on individual choices of direction, speed, and resources, constitutes a translation of the design thinking structure in the artistic production process. These parameters must inevitably be coordinated: Different ways of thinking correspond to different modes of transportation – continuous processes with the train, fragmented work methods with public transport, direct approaches with the highway, meditative transitions with the ferry. Movement becomes method, travel becomes artistic decision.
Program:
Preparatory workshops: October and November in Vienna and Lower Austria
Excursions in Vienna and surroundings
Individually designed journey: max. 14 days in December 2025 to Cretto Burri / Sicily with concluding exhibition on site
Exhibition: January 2026 in Vienna