2008 RIO GRANADA

RIO GRANADA
for „unORTnung IV“
Copa Kagrana Vienna (A)

RIO GRANADA is an installation that was built into a two-floor chippy where you could get kebab and French fries before it was closed down. In the basement there was even a small bar and a kind of dancing club. The building is situated on the Copa Kagrana, a popular leisure zone on the Danube in Vienna.

The installation exploited the hillside situation of the building. A miniature river was constructed inside the house, flowing from a tap on the first floor. I found most of the materials in an old storeroom crammed with buckets, plastic tubes, glasses and kitchen equipment. Some of the architectural elements were integrated, like the handrail, the light-strip at the bar, the windows etc. It flowed through a series of basins, dams and waterfalls, then irrigating a small bed of cress before discharging via a sloping path outside the building and into the Danube.

(„unORTnung“ is a series of projects and exhibitions initiated by Veronika Barnas and Andrea Maria Krenn (until nov 2008). It adapts various empty locations in Vienna and invites artists to create interdisciplinary projects on the spot and to present them to the public. The unused locations within the city – these non-places – are retaken and consciously adapted to be used as temporary alternatives to the established cultural szene.)