First Klima Biennale Wien starts

PRESS RELEASE

First Klima Biennale Wien Starts - 100 Days, 100 Partners, 1 Vision

The Klima Biennale Wien lasts 100 days. Starting with a condensed Opening Week, the Biennale launches its first edition, positioning the City of Vienna as a pioneer in linking current ecological challenges with art, design, architecture, and science. In ad dition to established art institutions and festivals such as Belvedere 21, the World Museum, or the Vienna Festival Weeks, representatives of Vienna’s independent scene and organizations like Volkshilfe Wien [Vienna People’s Aid] are also joining the ambit ious program. Financially and in terms of content, the Biennale is broadly supported by three departments of the City of Vienna.

Opening Week of the Klima Biennale Wien

Thepublic program of the Opening Week begins on Saturday, 6 April, with numerous events, workshops, and guided tours. The opening ceremony takes place on Saturday from 7.30 pm at the festival area at Nordwestbahnhof with a lecture performance by Natalia a nd Dominik Eulberg, followed by a DJ live set by Dominik Eulberg. The after party at Flucc, in cooperation with Malefiz, starts at midnight.

Biennale Center at KunstHausWien

The Biennale Center is located at KunstHausWien, which was sustainably renovated until the beginning of this year. Into the Woods the group exhibition curated by Sophie Haslinger for the first Klima Biennale Wien, is dedicated to one of the most important ecosystems of our time: On two floors of the museum, 16 contemporary positions explore the human impact on the state of the forests and their destruction, as well as the collective and symbiotic activities of the forest ecosystem. In the project room Garage, modular workshops are housed, where repair cafes and workshops are offered. In the courtyard, a temporary and sustainably built event space for talks, performances, concerts, and community meetings is implemented: Following the principles of re use and upcycling, the “Climate Culture Pavilion” designed by th e Breathe Earth Collective for the cultural year Graz 2020 is adapted to the Klima Biennale Pavilion In June, the first Vienna Climate Summit will also take place in KunstHausWien a new interactive symposium format that addresses the school and extr acurricular education community with workshops as well as scientific and artistic impulses. In the project room of the Garage, the interactive installation Arapolis by Baltic Raw Org is established, which examines a post apocalyptic refuge in the year 20 70 and encourages reflection on the climate emergency. Visitors can actively participate through decisions and bets on the future, thus exploring the urgency of the topic. The work also serves as a connecting link between the Biennale Center and the festiv al area at Nordwestbahnhof.

Festival area at Nordwestbahnhof

The festival area at Nordwestbahnhof was designed by StudioVlayStreeruwitz together with Rajek Barosch Landschaftsarchitekten. Former parking facilities were unsealed and transformed with rescue d plants into a place to linger, exchange, and for events. With children’s play areas, there is also an offer for the youngest at the festival area, and, in addition, WIENXTRA is making a stop with a participatory program for children on the opening weeken d: Hollis Grätzltour [Neighborhood Tour] invites young researchers to play and experiment.

The group exhibition Songs for the Changing Seasons curated by Lucia Pietroiusti (Head of Ecologies, Serpentine, London) and Filipa Ramos ( Institute Art Gender Nature ( Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz ( Basel), brings together artists from all over the world whose works express vario us forms of love, reparation, and mourning in the face of ecological challenges. With installations, films and videos, sculptures, and paintings, the exhibition explores where and how concerns about the environment manifest themselves and shows how art dea ls with them.

The exhibition Design with a Purpose implemented together with the Vienna Design Week shows examples of how design can be a key to an ecological, social, and meaningful coexistence and economy. It presents sustainable Austrian design prod ucts and illuminates the ecological, systemic, and symbolic impacts of the underlying design and production processes, as well as the continued existence of the objects in circular systems. The exhibition “Design with a Purpose” is funded by the Climate an d Energy Fund.

The exhibition Strategies & Solutions created in cooperation with the University of Applied Arts Vienna, the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, and the Technical University of Vienna displays works by students and gives visitors the opportunit y to observe them up close in their work processes.

The Biofabrique Vienna a cooperation project between the Atelier LUMA by Jan Boelen, the Vienna Business Agency, and the Institute for Architecture and Design at TU Vienna is dedicated to the questi on of how unused local resources can be transformed into new materials for future urban projects.

In the citywide exhibition format Immediate Matters which emerged from an open call, independent art spaces and the artists’ positions exhibited therein are linked. Together, they form a network that explores diverse perspectives on the impact of human behavior on nature and the various non human actors within it. Participants are Käthe Hager von Strobele (EIKON Schauraum), Johanna Binder, Karin Maria Pfeifer, Sula Zimmerberger (flat 1 offspace), Johanna Tinzl ( Baltazar’s Laboratory), Oliver Alunovic (Magdalenenstraße 33), Kathrin Sturmreich (discotec . Hana Usuis (Marcello Farabegoli) Projects. The exhibitions are open at least from 6 to 18 April 2024, Wed Sun, from 3 to 8 p.m.

Further highlights of the first Klima Biennale Wien

With the Activism Camp (in cooperation with the Vienna Festival W eeks and the Austrian Museum of Folk Life and Folk Art), an experimental field opens up, in which, together with more than 20 different initiatives, organizations, and alliances from the climate activist scene, free spaces are created. The public program s pans a range from workshops on campaign development with Greenpeace, protest training with the Last Generation, a performance of the Complaint Choir to “Power comes from Doing”, a workshop for teenagers with the activist group Radikale Töchter [Radical Dau ghters].

Through the versatile educational program the Biennale also actively invites the population to think together about a future in climate change. Program items such as the DOCK for Change initiated by the Children’s Office of the University of Vienna, the Future Laboratory implemented by Vienna Vo lkshilfe, the Mobile School for Art Sustainability designed by SOHO Studios, or the first Viennese Climate Summit (24th and 25th June at the Biennale Center) are aimed at the school and extracurricular education community in order to also enable younger generations to participate in shaping a livable future. For the Klima Biennale Wien, under the title Sensing Resonance Nora Mayr curates 2024 encounters between the artists Imayna Caceres, Barbara Kapusta, Julian Palacz, and Borjana Ventzislavova with s elected research units of the CircEUlar project, in which, among others, the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis ( and the Institute for Social Ecology (SEC) of the University for Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU) participate. The results of this four month investigation of the artists will be presented for the first time in the course of the Vienna Climate Summit. The aim of the event is to find new starting points for climate and science communication together.

You can find the current programme of events HIER.