A project with the TransArts class,
University of Applied Arts Vienna. Curated by Julia Harrauer.
A
door represents a transition — a threshold. This project began with a simple yet unusual place – a double door.
On
the second floor of the University of Applied Arts Vienna, a set of double doors once led to the studios of the TransArts
class. Yet, when opened, they reveal a different reality — a solid wall. The passage could have been entirely walled-up, the
doors removed, and the wall seamlessly closed. Instead, it exists in a state of paradox — a non-space, a reference to something
that no longer exists. What remains is a relic of its former function, a reminder of what once was. This passageway thus becomes
a threshold that captures two points in time, bridging past and present. Space is the medium through which these temporal
shifts take form; without space, time becomes imperceptible. A sealed-off door, stripped of its original function, transforms
into something else — an architectural element of change, oscillating between fiction and reality, past and future.
This
threshold, simultaneously evoking the past and creating an absence in the present, serves as the starting point for four artistic
interventions by Jordi Albers, Michael Robert Jiménez, Kimiya Rastgou Moghadam, and Elena Riener and Birgit Fellner.
Over the course of the year, the students of the TransArts class will reintegrate the site into the architectural and conceptual
framework of the university. The selected artworks engage with the tension between presence and absence, memory and
transformation. They treat space as an interface, challenging its physical and conceptual boundaries while making transformation
an integral part of the works themselves. Change is not only reflected in the site’s shifting context but actively materializes
within the pieces — through evolving materials, altered structures, and shifting meanings shaped by time and interaction.
–
Julia Harrauer
Dieses Alles ist Nichts (engl.: This Everything is Nothing) presents
new works by Birgit F. and Elena Riener. The basis of the works is Elfriede Jelinek’s text Mode (engl.:
Fashion), which also the exhibition title origins from.
A bark beetle, sequin dresses,
and never empty covers. It could also be a dressed up closet, and of course, the door can close, and then there is nothing
left. Yet the fact that none of us left the house naked today will also resonate in this place.
Messages
sent in the clothes-chat, texts read together, and hybrid exchanges of text lines describe what it might be about. But the
story itself unfolds in the space in between.
– Birgit F. & Elena Riener
