For the very curious, there is a TRAIN TOUR starting from Linz Central Station from noon, where you can already take a look at some of the projects along the route. For those who only have time later, there is the INAUGURAL RIDE with the FdR*TRAIN.
Projects
Region 2023
The action area of the 2023 festival was the region along the Summerauerbahn railway. From the city of Linz, through the Mühlviertel and across the border to the Czech Republic.
An meinen Haaren möcht‘ ich sterben
An meinen Haaren möcht‘ ich sterben dealt with being beside oneself, non-arriving, in perpetual travel. In a video work and a performance Peter Kozek, Vanessa Mazanik and Florian Ronc dealt with the ritual of mourning.
Tangible Music
As part of the opening ceremony in Horní Dvořiště, students from the master’s program Postdigital Lutherie developed two instruments especially for this year’s festival theme.
Lipno, zrcadlo historie 20. století
The exhibition is our latest work in the region around Lipno lake and tells the story of a historical switching of the settlers along the border, especially during the first years after the ending of WWII.
sunnseitn * Gotthard Wagner & Cindži Renta
Sunnseitn has been a project of the cultural movement since its foundation in 1991. From meaningful border crossings to expeditions into the unknown.
Water Research & Water Bar
Together with people from the region, the Sladovna Písek team got to the bottom of the stories of water along the Summerauerbahn railway and also explored performative aspects of drinking.
Es war einmal ein sehr alter Stau
The Mühlviertel tells a long story of trade movement between the Danube and the Vltava, of medieval carts, of the horse-drawn railroad and of the Summerauerbahn railway line. The rural communities in the region were hardly influenced by this, until the agricultural changes and the rural exodus of the past seventy years caught up with them.
30*Mobile Druckwerkstatt
Dagmar Höss helped shape and accompanied the Festival of the Regions over the course of many editions, as the head, as an artist, and as a visitor. Her project puts the focus on the titles of every previous edition of the festival.
Eine Bahnreise durch die Filmgeschichte
High Time was the motto of Festival of the Regions 2023, and therefore this seems like a fitting reason for the Local-Bühne Freistadt to pick up on this topic in a cinematographic manner.
FESTIVALZONE Salzgasse Freistadt Keep Connected Bewusstseinsbildung Festivalregion
The festival zone was not only a venue for activities, but also a starting point for exploring the region and the projects in the region.
Frauentor-Besetzung und Frauengassen-Fest
Frauenpersönlichkeiten sind bei der Namensgebung von Straßen und Plätzen deutlich unterrepräsentiert. Von den rund 190 Straßen in Freistadt sind zum Beispiel zirka 60 nach Männern benannt, aber nur vier nach Frauen. Auf diese eklatante Schieflage macht die Aktionsgruppe Fraustadt Freistadt mit einer Frauentor-Besetzung und einem Frauengassen-Fest aufmerksam.
Free Stock Sport
Eine virale Kampagne behauptet in Anlehnung an Graffiti-Kultur, Skater-Szene, Free-Techno und illegale Autorennen das Aufkeimen des Asphaltstocksports in der Subkultur. Eine Intervention in der Freistädter Salzgasse unterzieht diesen selbst generierten Mythos einem praktischen Realitätstest.
Garden_Networks
The goal of the project was the activation and strengthening of online networks between gardeners and bio laboratories, food networks and knowledge networks, and networks of our surroundings and networks of our knowledge.
HYPER TASTE
Based on traditional dishes from Austrian and Czech cuisine, 30 participants developed their own recipes during a one-day workshop and then cooked them together with chefs Martin Parzer and Maximilian Wagner.
Landgänge 2023: VOR > BEI
After a concert in the Salzhof Freistadt, the audience had the opportunity to walk together along musical signposts to St Peter. Two further concerts followed in the Kalvarienbergkirche and the Filialkirche.
VegLab
VegLab is a platform that allows people to deal with growing vegetables without any necessary previous experience. Those interested will be confronted with crop plants that grow in our region and will learn what it is that they need in order to prosper. The core of the vegetable laboratory is a geodetic greenhouse that measures eight metres in diameter.
verflechtn
Varied exchange formats for a new perspective on art and cultural work in rural regions.
Baugerüst
Decoupled from any building structure, the functionless scaffolding stood alone in the outdoor space and also appears to have partially toppled over. The imposing and equally fragile construction leans at one end until it lies flat on the ground.
Indigo Hyphae
Culture is never static. It breathes, grows and adapts with the people living at the time. Today, we live in a time where we have access to various „making techniques“ originating in different locations and societies.
Organ/Orgel
Inspired by the interior of the parish church in Kefermarkt, Tom Bogaert developed a site-specific installation of inflatable objects. Organ/Orgel is part of a series of similar works in which church architecture is combined with contemporary forms and materials.
PLASTICPHONIA
The musical art project Plasticphonia deals with the internationally relevant topic of a throwaway society, and particularly with the contamination caused by plastic.
A reminder of being constructed
Two cubic objects were placed at the railway station in St. Georgen and on the way to the former Gusen III concentration camp, reminiscent of memorials despite their industrial materiality and aesthetics.
Dead Monster Game
Dead Monster Game combines sculptural objects that are reminiscent of the limbs of monsters with photographies and videos that show children playing with these monster limbs.
In Zeiten wie diesen
An exhibition at Gaisbach-Wartberg railway station showed artistic works that dealt with war and flight – and the associated waiting for better times.
turn | table | tennis – On The Track
turn | table | tennis is an event format that playfully combines societal concerns with artistic and cultural aspirations – in the form of table tennis.
Zug/Ende
For the piece Zug/Ende a stage-like reconstruction of an old passenger train was created, cut off after three meters and placed at the train station in Gaisbach-Wartberg.
GIVEAWAYS/HIDEAWAYS
The concentration camp Lungitz-Gusen III was close to the train station Lungitz. This central point of their roject is approximated by Antoine Turillon and Seth Weiner in “Giveaways/Hideaways”.
Geschichte im Gespräch
The workshop was based on personal references to Nazi history and presented a didactic approach that related directly to historical sites.
Die Zukunft beginnt Heute
A shared and sustainable use of space, energy and food – was part of the project.
Kollektives Warten in Extremwetterlage
Travelling and waiting go hand in hand. And weather conditions can force us to wait while travelling. While people wait alone in their cars, in trains the wait becomes a collective experience that holds a certain potential.
Manifesting Earthly Survival
The Manifesting Earthly Survival project aimed to devise and realise speculative fables for the survival of our planet.
Grandmothers Favorite
Postmodern Sudoku-Jazz.
“To mistake is the only chance for something new to happen and therefore it isn’t a mistake.”
Steel Rings
The artistic work Steel Rings reproduced several sections of the decommissioned Trans-Arabian Pipeline. Sculptures made of the same material each represented one kilometre of the original on a scale of 1:1.
30 Jahre Festival der Regionen
For the 30th anniversary of the Festival of the Regions, the system analyst and diagram researcher Gerhard Dirmoser created a study of every festival project that took place between 1993 and 2023. The results of this study were then transformed into a spatial installation by the artist and designer Gerald Priewasser-Höller.
Hijab Offline
Hijab Offline is based on the autobiographical experiences of artist Shahrzad Nazarpour and the official racism report of 2020. The dance performance was about life in Austria, about discussions and violence in digital and public spaces, about exoticisation and sexualisation, and about anti-Muslim racism in relation to the hijab.
KLANGfestival
From 30 June to 1 July 2023, the KLANGfestival enchanted the Alte Hallenbad in Gallneukirchen with unique sounds, performances, installations and surprises.
Skills & Tools: A Guidebook
The starting point for their performance was elements from folk dance, in particular from skill and advertising dances, which were originally almost exclusively reserved for men. In the traditional context of folk dance, role models and movement patterns are assigned in a strictly binary way and sometimes charged with sexism.
Gallneukirchen and the Railway or The Art of Hindrance
A very special spectacle took place in Gallneukirchen on the occasion of the Festival of Regions. A “procession” along the planned route of the Regiotram.
We will live forever
We Will Live Forever was a project by anGie seah in collaboration with “Die Kunstwerkstatt | Theater Malaria”. Together with the artist, the participants crossed the boundaries of spoken language.
Endstation
What do the tracks of gastronomy – starting from the horse-drawn train between Linz and Budweis to the later Summerauerbahn railway – tell us about the social junctions and changes in public spaces tell us? The audio installation Endstation explores these questions.
Time Play
JUMP, STOP, HIGH, WOW! Time Play is a site-specific performance in which two dancers playfully challenge each other and also the audience. Inspired by various children’s games, a ping-pong duet of words and movements is created. Back and forth, from front to back and over and over again.
familiar strangers. slam & jam in der Summerauerbahn
The Poetry Slam champion Elif Duygu tells stories from the lives of “familiar strangers” and is accompanied by the musician Uwe Felchle.
Festival Trailer
The trailer for the Festival of Regions 2023 was created by artist Sara Piñeros, who was inspired by the ride on the Summerauerbahn railway. Her film Höchste Eisenbahn floats between the different realities of physical and social landscapes – and also questions the boundaries between the natural and the artificial.
Mind the Gap
Every day the railway transports people, the machine keeps on running and running and running. But when is it time to throw a spanner in the works, chart a new course, or even pull the emergency break?
N_ONSITE
N_ONSITE was a studio, place of interaction and exhibition space on rails. The project by Susanna Melem and Severin Standhartinger saw itself as a fusion of artistic field research and participatory intervention in a public transit space.
Print & Glory
From the choice of motif to the signature on the sheet, Marek Borsányi produced his prints on site.
Wir sind am Zug
Public transport does not only move our bodies from point A to point B, but opens the possibility to also move forward on a thematic and societal level through encounters. To hop on a train could also refer to a train of thought and can mean to openly discuss urgent questions together.
ZUG um ZUG, der erste Zug!
Zug um Zug, the first train! wanted to draw attention to other mobility options in a rural region characterised by automobile traffic. The project questioned individual transport in order to initiate new ways of thinking and discourse.
Zügige Visionen
Dive into the surreal in a short journey on the train. The artists Alja Piry, Regina Picker, and Lucie Kaiserová invite audiences into their train compartments in order to experiment with surrealist techniques and games, guided in German, English, and Czech language.
Comments
Creativity and sustainability are key elements of a sustainable society.
THANKS & Team 2023
* High time to say THANK YOU
Even after 30 years, the Festival of Regions has never tired of promoting experimental, innovative art and cultural projects, developing them in the region and providing surprises.
Participants 2024
A – C Nika Autor’s (In Zeiten wie diesen – Newsreel 63 – The Train of Shadows) artistic work includes experimental videos and documentaries, film essays, video installations, photographs, collages and drawings. Her focus is the exploration of invisibilities and inaudibilities in relation to hidden themes of the forgotten past and a silenced present. Nika… weiterlesen