Platz nehmen #5:Let´s stick with the Unicorns – Aesthetic Consequences of Care, Tidying and Re.use

With artistic interventions by students, a lecture and discussion by and with climate researcher Helga Kromp-Kolb, the Construction Choir, and the performative Summer Showing by the Department of Art and Intervention | Performance.

Let´s stick with the Unicorns is a large-scale artistic intervention at Schillerplatz that examines public space as a concrete ecological and social situation. At its core is the question of how artistic practice can remain effective under conditions of ecological crisis. Transformation is not understood as a goal or a promise for the future, but as a present practice. The artistic works use existing materials, vegetation, traces of use, and temporal processes to actively position themselves against existing capitalist climate narratives. The artistic explorations are temporary, reversible, and site-specific.

Through the conscious use of resources, the acceptance of change, decay, and transience, the space can be experienced as a dynamic structure. Let's stick with the Unicorns refers to an attitude of active agency and personal responsibility under restrictive conditions and highlights the need not to distance oneself or succumb to cynicism despite scientifically described tipping points and irreversible processes.

The event begins two days before the main event, on May 11. These first two days are dedicated to lectures and various interventions. On the third day, May 13, the project opens with the format Platz nehmen #5 for collective reflection and invites the public to actively participate in the program: In a lecture, climate researcher Helga Kromp-Kolb will speak about planetary boundaries, social responsibility, and scope for action. The performative Summer Showing by the Department of Art and Time I Performance and the performance by the Construction Choir Collective expand the artistic-scientific discourse to include physical, temporal, and collective dimensions. Different forms of knowledge and expression enter into a relationship with one another without being hirarchically ordered.

In Let's stick with the Unicorns, Schillerplatz becomes a place where ecological reality, artistic practice, and social responsibility are not negotiated separately, but simultaneously.

Concept: Transformation group Akbild
Steffi Alte,Kirsten Borchert, Veronika Dirnhofer, Theresa Eipeldauer, Zahra Mirza,
Noele Ody, Rainer Prohaska, Tomash Schoiswohl, Ruby Sircar, Saskia Te Nicklin

Participants: Juhyun Lee, Loreen Schmid, Istvan Antal, Katarina Michelitsch, Jee Hyun, Elizabet Son, Adam Hudec, Victoria Dräxler, Heidi Rosenberger, Flora Franke, Mariia Pylypenko & Boyun Park, Wenfei Zhao, Sophie Greistorfer, Zoe Glasenapp, Jeremias Rumpl, Nico Schleicher, Kweku Okokroko, Natália Zajačiková, Mathea Magdalena, Barboa Chen & Carla Bobadilla, Hanna Schimek, Roman Berleth & Rafael Hofmann, Stella Schwaiger, Vitus Mages, Hannah Parth, Luis Penn, Rasmus Rutsch, Renee Salome Tischer, Vik Bayer (Klasse für alle), Robin Food, Irene Lucas, Construction Choir Collective

Project lead: Claudia Kaiser, Academy | Art  | Public Sphere