Transparadiso: Ganz nah so fern
Factsheet
Format: Art in architecture/Façade installation
Location: 1130 Vienna, Hietzinger Kai 131, former BUWOG Customer and Administrative Centre
Creation: 2008
Artists: the transparadiso collective: Barbara Holub (*1959 in Stuttgart, lives and works in Vienna), Paul Rajakovics (*1963 in Bruck an der Mur, lives and works in Vienna), www.transparadiso.com/de
Info/Scope: Two-part façade design (mesh banner) for the former BUWOG Customer and Administrative Centre, 1130 Vienna
Dimensions: Façade installation, two-part mesh banner, 215 m2
transparadiso: Ganz nah so fern / So close, so far away
Beginning in 2006, the façade of the former BUWOG Customer and Administrative Centre in 1130 Vienna was periodically furnished with an artistic design. Curated by Grita Insam, the transparadiso collective used this highly visible surface in 2008 and 2009. The immense two-part mesh banner titled Ganz nah so fern flanked the window axis of the tower block and displayed an oversized satellite dish (rasterized out of small parabolic antennas). Whereas city silhouettes were once crowned by the towers of city halls and church spires, mobile phone masts and satellite dishes now adorn the skylines of our current places of residence as “modernist world receivers”. Ganz nah so fern makes reference to social changes that can be read in their object-equivalents in our cities. Barbara Holub (artist) and Paul Rajakovics (architect, urbanist) have been engaged in transdisciplinary work in the fields of art, artistic-urban intervention, urbanism and architecture since 1999. Their work poses sociopolitical questions about living and housing and in what form socially committed urban planning (“direct urbanism”) can become effective.
Photos: © Barbara Holub & Paul Rajakovics
