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Gesamtkunstwerk not been completed
Facade, Maindeck and house
Continuous

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The STWSTas a place of imagination and resistance - we imagine the building as a ship, mooring it to the square. A razzle-dazzle disorientation pattern on the building extends the façade as an artistic display. Parts of the wrecked ship Eleonore lie in front of the STWST on the square - as an explosion installation. A point of light crawls through the house as a creature seeking its manifestation - as a creeping light it pervades parts of the house and proclaims on text panels: the ship and the non-ship, a NOT ON PLANET EARTH and a revolt of imagination.

With this abstractions, the STWST focusses on its theory and research tracks. Stadtwerkstatt asserts nothing less than a transformational Gesamtkunstwerk that awakens as an entity and develops consciousness. As an idea of itself and equipped with its own consciousness, this Gesamtkunstwerk constantly creates new ideas of itself in order to change its form and remain unfinished. Today a ship, tomorrow a planet. Even if the idea of a Gesamtkunstwerk may be crazy in view of technological developments and an imminent major paradigm shift: absoluteness, imagination and contradiction are still the relevant materials with which we should work.

NOPE factor: The whole is the art. Gesamtkunstwerk not finished.

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The STWST as a ship is an overall concept by Stadtwerkstatt. It involves STWST artists and critical producers, several projects, most levels of in-house production and references from the STWST archive. Between ship, imagination and an unfinished total work of art (“Gesamtkunstwerk Unfinished”), Tanja Brandmayr has conceived and realised the essential features here for the STWST.

Stadtwerkstatt / STWST (A): The Stadtwerkstatt / STWST has existed since 1979 and is the first autonomous art and culture centre in Linz. From the very beginning, it has been associated with a self-understanding of initiative, activism, subculture and a practice of constantly redefining contexts. In media and media art, the location has had a history of relevant projects since the 1980s. Today, Stadtwerkstatt works in the areas of New Art Contexts, runs media such as the newspaper Versorgerin, runs the Music Club and the Cafe Strom. Between art, media, criticism, music, underground and the mixed spheres of the building, activities are formed that are comprehensive, interdisciplinary and motivated by artistic, cultural, technological and socially relevant intentions. stwst.at

Photocredits:

Photo left: STWST and STWST archive, with picture element “Vertäuen”, project draft by STWST 1988

Photo right: Creative Commons, public domain. Passenger_ship_ZEALANDIA_in_wartime_dazzle_paint_
From the Australian National Maritime Museum on The Commons

DOCUMENTATION