There they lie, like tumbled columns,
cut-down urban trees from Vienna, in a green sitting bay amid an otherwise sealed urban area. Shapes are milled cut into the
trunks: development curves that illustrate our warped relationship with nature.
Growth rings
are the natural chronicle of a tree’s life. The robot-milled curves, however, illustrate human interference in nature: statistical
data on the rising milk production of Austrian cows, for example, or the spreading use of snow-cannon systems, or the increasing
sealing of soils. These developments are closely related. They are based on regional, global, political and individual decisions.
They are both causes and symptoms of a crisis that is slow in the making but sure to come.
The trees lying
there on Kramreiterweg once were life-bearers, air purifiers, and climate regulators. They had to give way to the urban sprawl.
Displaced by concrete and asphalt. Sickened by nutrient depletion and fungal infestation. Nature is made to conform to humans
for short-term profit and comfort. This alignment has uncomfortable consequences in the long term. Also for us. Can we still
turn around?
Venue: Kramreiterweg, 1210 Vienna
Duration: May 2022–spring
2023
Picnic at the installation
Kramreiterweg
4 June at 5 pm
Dóra
Medveczky, b. 1990 in Budapest (HU), and Fabio Spink, b. 1991 in Heiden (CH), live in Vienna.
Financial
support: KÖR Kunst im Öffentlichen Raum Wien, City of Vienna
Thanks to: MA 42 –
Parks and Gardens, University of Applied Arts Vienna (Angewandte Robotics Lab und Holztechnologie, Masterstudiengang Social
Design), Antonio Airelli, Sina Gerschwiler, Philipp Hornung, Florian Kläger, Nina Kreuzinger, Pascal Rathgeb, Philipp Reinsberg,
David Schessl, Anna Vasof
Further
information
