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faktumflakturm · 5 years

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FAKTUM FLAKTURM

http://flakturm.net

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

The project FAKTUM FLAKTURM is one of its kind. It’s an opportunity for facing and analysing the past on an in- ternational scale, a European experiment with regard to remembering the past and conveying history.

FAKTUM FLAKTURM

About the motives of the association

Despite the fact that the six massive ferro- concrete monoliths – flak towers built between 1943 and 1945 during the time of National Socialism - occupy a distinc- tive position in the city centre of Vienna, discussion and implementation regarding their association to one of the darkest periods in Austrian history has since that time been denied. The circumstance that the Viennese Flak Towers, unlike the German exemplars, remain until to date uncommented and unconsidered is one of the expressions of Austria’s “Victim thesis”, which was legitimised by the Moscow Declaration. All six towers in Berlin and two out of four in Hamburg were removed in the post-war period for the most part by the Allies. In 1949 the Federal Ministry for Trade and Reconstruction recognised that “those flak towers built by the German Reich with their own materials for their own purposes are now to be enforcedly managed by the Republic of Austria.”

To the present day, as measured by the dealing with its edificial relics, there has been hardly any change in the rejection attitude towards the Austrian inheritance of National Socialism. Not one of the flak towers is being identified as what it actu- ally is: a memorial to the national-socialis-

tic war of extermination. Today, economic motives for the use of the existing structures for profit, as well as attempts to conceal the perception of their disturbing presence through non-referenced utilisation and embellished re-purpoing, determine the occupation of the flak towers. One such concept, “Das Haus des Meeres” in the light-tower in Esterhazy park, has already been successfully initiated and con- tinues to enjoy progressive developments. The turret (or gun tower) in the Stiftkas- erne, a military structure inaccessible to the public, has also been extracted from the discussion. The flak tower in Augarten serving as a real estate venture has been rented out for an unlimited period of time to a private company dealing with data. Upon this tower’s turret initial restructur- ing measures with demolition works have been conducted that have strongly affected the appearance of the listed edifice. The University of Applied Arts is still striving for a partly artistic and partly commercial use of the turret in Arenbergpark. Only one neighbouring tower has been so far excluded from such utilisation concepts.

On the occasion of an exhibition series by an artist group in May 2005, June 2006 and December 2006, the tower revealed its innards in an actual unaltered state of decay, and presented, simultane-

ously with the exhibited works of art, a snap-shot of an almost untouched struc- ture - a structure numbed in stasis over 62 years of unassimilated history.

Due to the large amount of interest the opening of the tower in Arenbergpark ex- perienced from visitors, politicians, and the media, coupled with the quick-developing needs of the involved artists, historians and architects for an interdisciplinary platform that accounts for its very history, the Fak- tum Flakturm association was established.

ART CONCEPTS

The association conceives art as a way to directly procure the warlike and tragic events of which the flak towers remind us, not in a didactical way but through the examination of the topic by artists. It understands art as an attempt to clear out those circumstances that currently reflect the suppressed historical discussion without neglecting the overpowering stigma of Austria’s complex inheritance. The project Faktum Flakturm defines itself as an experiment of open questions regard-

ing remembrance-culture and historical mediation; it gives cultural workers and artists the opportunity to situate themselves in this historical location and establish

it as a site of concentration, productive contention, and freedom. The experiences

collected with past exhibitions open new ways for area enlivenment, for exhibition practices, and with it new avenues of defi- nition for Austria’s cultural landscape. Faktum Flaktum considers it a necessity that, for the time being at least, one of the six towers in Vienna be used in a way that is directly related to its history; that by means of interdisciplinary exchanges with art this history can be noted and even celebrated in the public consciousness. Furthermore it is necessary that this hap- pens now, since the time in which direct witnesses could talk about the past will soon be gone.

ARCHITECTURAL CONCEPTS

Another further aim of the Faktum

Flakturm association is to make sure that the exhibitions shown are in line with generally accepted conservation practices, and to develop long-term concepts for the mediation of the tower’s history. Methods are to be found for how to preserve the encountered transitory state of the flak tower’s inner space and how to continu- ously make it a subject of discussion and proposition. The necessary measures

of protection should subscribe to the requirements of preservation of sites with historical interest, and to the authenticity of the existent state. The outer aspect of

the tower is also in a state of transition: the architecture of the towers as we see them today correspond to the old-fashioned war architecture that never lived to see the planned restructuring of the ideological analogy for the “Reich’s 1000 years”. This aspect of consideration upon the ferro- concrete architecture is also a field for artistic reflection.

We believe that a frontal didactical me- diation approach, especially regarding the period of National Socialism, is a rather unsuitable one since this topic is still very emotionally entangled, and may lead to the refusal by recipients to remain open to relevant advice, and to the provocation of doubt about the contents and accompany- ing procuration methods.

At the same time history is often being perceived as something static, as a completed cycle from the past. On the contrary, during our enquiry of the Aren- bergpark flak tower we have experienced its history as a surprisingly lively process. The dynamic perception that exists inside the building manifests itself most of all through the stories that the walls have to tell: chalk and pencil inscriptions by forced labourers, officers and those who were looking for protection, are doubtlessly part of the substance divulged and registered today. In this respect the tower is readable

ASSOCIATION

FAKTUM FLAKTURM

Verein zur Förderung interdisziplinärer Kunst und Kultur im Flakleitturm Arenbergpark Wien 3

CONTACT [email protected]

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