LICHT 2000/2001

Sepp Auer added yet another dimension by simulating the entrance to a house. He built an aluminium doorframe and from a door slightly ajar he had glistening light pouring out on the street, creating the impression of a different world behind it. The work can be toured as a permanent installation.

LICHT 2000 began with a picture puzzle by Brigitte Kordina. It consisted of individual light spots which when you joined them spelt the word LICHT (LIGHT) on the gables above the main gate to the medieval town.

The architects Walter Kirpicsenko and Alexander Klose in their contribution "es ist was es ist" (it is what it is) created an installation in two parts, one for inside and one for outside. For the outside part they decided to label selected buildings with codes, i.e. to use them as passive light sources which had to be activated by light from outside. Inside, in the gallery, they used an electrified light plate to convey all the information surrounding the installation.

Martin Mostböck’s installation "Supagarcia"consisted of a 5 meter high perforated steel pipe. The artist’s intention was to literally expose light and project it onto its surroundings, allowing for all kinds of associations.

Brigitte Pamperl’s slide installation "Grenzposition 2000" (border position) turned the 'Kremser' gate into a test stand for mankind, for the exploitation of scientific findings and the new ethic boundaries this entails. Slides of different genetic codes were projected onto passers-by as they passed through the gate.

The architects Franz Sam, Irene Ott-Reinisch and Martin Skladal wanted to network the local country road with the rest of the world. Several screens were arranged in a room of one of the local stores depicting the light situations of other places. Live pictures of the local road situation were projected onto a homepage on the Internet.

Markus Wintersberger’s project "Oh yes Sir, I can boogie…Instant Access! No credit cards required!" was installed at the Linzertor. Light spots circled rhythmically in the vaults of the old town gate to simulate the starry skies characteristic of discos. The picture of a naked female body was taken from the Internet and blown up onto a poster to remind us of the compulsion we are all under in this age following the sexual revolution to continuously prove ourselves as sexually capable.

In 2001, green neon letters spelling out the word "Fremd" (foreign) were hung in an abandoned empty store and at night the outside was dipped in red. Next to the store Evelyne Egerer put a palm tree, a reminder that palm trees were immigrants from foreign countries in former days. On the windows one could read the words "east" and "west" in Chinese letters. 

In a video and sound trip Lam Fung travelled through the history of societies, cultures, religions and ideologies, linking light with background noises, just as light is linked with church music for a religious experience, or with propaganda speeches for a political one. 

Rudolf Macher assembled an igloo on the grass area of a traffic roundabout which was to represent a survival cell for emergency situations. At the same time it served as a metaphor for physical forces such as the pole leap predicted by scientists. Through the cut-out windows one could see blinking lights conjuring up the dramatic escalation of all problems. 

The artists PRINZGAU/podgorschek came up with a very simple but effective installation. Two mirrors attached to opposite walls were used to reflect the light cone of a floodlight, making it seem endless. Thus, they created a virtual north-south axis right through the houses to set off the real east-west axis of the road. The work can be toured as a permanent installation. 

Erwin Redl did a continuation of his MATRIX series which he called "MATRIX V". He established an analogy for the historical buildings by covering the barrel vaults of one of the passageways with a mesh of light beams. 

Michael Zinganel’s works focus on dream images and clichés and their subsequent unveiling. For Krems-Stein he did a flying house which he lit up to open a world of humour. A vulnerable, fragile being, a stubborn child with full cheeks, which at some point is reduced back to its mere ingredients, is what Zinganel suggests. "A single-family dwelling with all the ambivalence of a safe and structured existence and a life of compromise threatening to become paralysed and be stifled", Rainer Fuchs once wrote about the "Luftschloss" (castle in the air) filled with helium. "There is no eternal life, not even for works of art", says Michael Zinganel and leaves behind a sense of immense lightness, or better still a sense of relief.