All Reading Dates (starting 18:30):
8 May with Jakob Pretterhofer, Fiston Mwanza Mujila
with performance by Nikolaus Eckhard and friends afterwards
15 May with Julia Grillmayr, Nika Pfeifer
22 May with Neslihan Yakut, Ann Cotten
29 May with Veronika Franz, Severin Fiala, Elias Hirschl
Download the publication here
A limited number of printed copies will be available for free during the reading nights.
Photo: Mark GerstorferJakob Pretterhofer was born in Graz in 1985 and studied Screenwriting at the Vienna Film Academy. Since 2023 he is teaching at the Vienna Film Academy. He writes novels and screenplays and often works as a film script advisor.
His latest book is called "Die erste Attacke" (The First Attack), published by Elster & Salis Wien, which tells a story about fear, nightmares and a vacation in the mountains.
Since the Reverse Imagining Vienna project, he has been fascinated by asphalt and concrete, intelligent mushrooms and Café 19 in Favoritenstraße.
Photo: Jürgen FuchsFiston Mwanza Mujila (* 1981 in Lubumbashi, DR Congo): From 2007, study visits to Belgium and France. In 2009 he received a scholarship as a city fellow in Graz, where he has lived since then (with interruptions, including for research). He is currently responsible for the literature program at the Forum Stadtpark. In addition to his work as an author and performer (collaboration with jazz musicians), he is active as a mediator and editor of the literature of the African diaspora. Fiston Mwanza Mujila publishes primarily in French, his debut novel Tram 83 received several awards, including the Grand Prix of Literary Associations (2015), the International Literature Prize – by the HKW Berlin and the Peter Rosegger Literature Prize of the State of Styria (2018). The author received the Prix Les Afriques in 2021 for his second novel La danse du Vilain (Dance of the Devils). Fiston Mwanza Mujila is awarded the Fiston Mwanza Mujila * 1981 in Lubumbashi (DR Congo). From 2007, study visits to Belgium and France In 2009 he received a scholarship as a city clerk in Graz, where he has lived since then (with interruptions, including for research). He is currently responsible for the literature program at the Graz Forum Stadtpark. In addition to his work as an author and performer (collaboration with jazz musicians), he is active as a mediator and editor of the literature of the African diaspora. Novels: Fiston Mwanza Mujila publishes primarily in French, his debut novel Tram 83 received several awards, including the Grand Prix of Literary Associations (2015), the International Literature Prize - House of World Cultures and the Peter Rosegger Literature Prize of the State of Styria ( 2018). The author received the Prix Les Afriques in 2021 for his second novel La danse du Vilain (Dance of the Devils). Fiston Mwanza Mujila is awarded the ‘Preis der Literaturhäuser’ in 2024.
About the exhibition:
Since 2020, the global stock of man-made mass has exceeded the total sum of biomass on Earth – around 90 percent of which is building materials. In the project Reverse Imagining Vienna, two sculptors and nine writers took a Viennese Gründerzeit building and the Prater Bridge, which crosses over the Danube, as material and speculative anchors in which to gain perspectives on sustainable relationships with inanimate matter. Referring to so-called reverse engineering, the two structures were deconstructed and recomposed in a historical, material-analytical, poetic and visionary way using reverse imagining.
Over a two year period, the project brought together national and international experts from the disciplines of geology, physics, ecology, urban morphology, transport sciences, evolutionary biology, literature and sculpture. The nine anthropogenic materials most relevant to the case studies were identified and analyzed in terms of cultural history, environmental science and social metabolism, from extraction to recycling management and emissions. Samples of material allowed conclusions to be drawn about their respective origins; the geological formation and potential futures were discussed in lectures by the participating scientists and contextualized for further speculative processing. In this way, images of varied futures were created with a time horizon that extends from the present and spans into the geological distance.
The exhibition Reverse Imagining Vienna is the final presentation of the artistic research project of the same name. Sculptures, scientific analyses of the nine anthropogenic materials and the first volume of a publication containing the resulting literary contributions are on display. Four readings by the participating authors will take place as part of the exhibition.
Writers:
Ann Cotten, Elias Hirschl, Jakob Pretterhofer, Julia Grillmayr, Fiston Mwanza Mujila, Neslihan Yakut, Nika Pfeifer, Veronika Franz & Severin Fiala
Scientists:
Angelika Psenner, Barbara Laa, Filipa L. Sousa, Fridolin Krausmann, Jan Zalasiewicz, Johannes Weber, Josepha Edbauer, Michael Wagreich, Peter Fichtinger, Sebastian Hafner, Tanja Traxler, Tess Posch
Project management and sculpure:
Christoph Weber, Nikolaus Eckhard
