Afterwards: Documentary “Building Visions – Auroville/India” – on June 24th from 10:30 p.m. on ORF 2 and on ORF ON
Vienna (OTS) – The “kulturMontag” presented by Peter Schneeberger on June 24, 2024 at 10:30 p.m. on ORF 2 and on ORF ON will, among other things, take stock of the first edition of the Wiener Festwochen, which is coming to an end, under neo-artistic director Milo Rau, and will look at the work of the Russian artist and “Pussy Riot” activist Nadya Tolokonnikova, to whom an exhibition at the Linzer OK, exhibition house and laboratory for contemporary art, is dedicated, and presents another episode of the nine-part dialect series #sogamoi, this time traveling to Tyrol. Following the magazine, the first issue of the four-part series “Building Visions” (11:30 p.m.) is on the program. The format puts the spotlight on architects who are looking for answers to the big questions facing our civilization today: climate change, rapidly growing cities, education and resource consumption, the involvement of local communities and networking. In this episode, director Diego Breit Lira takes a cinematic journey to Auroville in India.
Provocateur or swindler? Summary of the first Vienna Festival weeks under Milo Rau
Director Milo Rau announced in advance “the most political festival weeks of all time”. Now the first theater, music and performance festival he curated is coming to an end and one thing is clear: it was an extraordinary and hotly debated Vienna Festival Week. Even before the opening, the speech by the philosopher Omri Boehm excited people’s minds, followed by discussions about the composition of the “Council of the Republic” founded by Rau. The opening of the festival week, at which the neo-director proclaimed the “Free Republic of Vienna”, was also polarizing. However, the so-called Vienna trials received the most media attention. The festival weeks also became the talk of the town artistically. From Florentina Holzinger’s performance opera “Sancta” to the stage adaptation of Kim de l’Horizon’s novel “Blutstück” to the first opera directed by Milo Rau – Mozart’s “Clemenza” – the performances were sold out, the critics were divided. “kulturMontag” asks cultural journalists for their assessment of the 2024 Vienna Festival and their summary and takes stock of its first festival issue with Milo Rau.
Putin’s public enemy No. 1 – The artist Nadya Tolokonnikova in the Linzer OK
With her “punk prayer” in Moscow’s Church of the Savior in 2012, Nadya Tolokonnikova cursed Russia’s president and ended up in prison for two years. Branded a foreign agent, she fled into exile. The Russian artist, who became world-famous as one of the heads of the feminist-actionist punk band “Pussy Riot”, is now showing her work in Europe for the first time, more precisely in the OK in Linz. However, the prison walls were unable to break the spirit of resistance of the now 34-year-old. But Tolokonnikova, who published the anti-Putin book “Instructions for a Revolution” in 2016, is still struggling psychologically with the consequences of being separated from her then four-year-old daughter. In her art she deals urgently with resistance and repression and has developed her very own visual language: anarchistic, radical and touching at the same time. The exhibition of her art in the Linzer OK under the title “Rage” also shows a selection of Pussy Riot’s actions. Nadya Tolokonnikova talks to Peter Schneeberger live in the studio about art, her performance “Punk Prayer,” which the British Guardian ranks among the most important works of art of the 21st century, her life in exile and Putin’s Russia.
On the trail of the Tyrolean dialect – new episode of the #sogamoi series
The latest edition of the “kulturMontag” dialect series #sogamoi is on the road in Tyrol. For some the dialect spoken there sounds like a sore throat, for others Tyrolean gives a pleasant feeling. The throatily pronounced “K” is most often associated with this federal state, but from Landeck to Lienz, from Ischgl to Kitzbühel, there is an incredible variety of linguistic peculiarities and sound differences. While 100 years ago the valleys were more isolated and old dialects were preserved, today many terms are disappearing or changing due to people’s increasing mobility and technology. “kulturMontag” accompanies linguist Yvonne Kathrein, who works for the Tyrolean dialect archive and collects dialect recordings from so-called informants. The author and filmmaker Händl Klaus talks about his experiences as a Tyrolean in Berlin and the experiences of writing in his childhood language. The rap trio “Von Seiten der Gemeinde”, which comes from the Tyrolean Oberland and performs in dialect, deals with stirring topics such as the return of the wolf and après-ski in Ischgl in its critical songs.
Documentary “Building visions – Auroville/India” (11.30 p.m.)
India’s megacities are bursting at the seams. The country has 1.4 billion inhabitants and more are added every year. The cranes and excavators on construction sites never stand still. In order to create new living space, the construction industry blows gigantic amounts of CO2 into the already polluted air every day. The population can hardly breathe.
Auroville is located in the south of the country. A true oasis compared to cities like Mumbai or New Delhi. Auroville sees itself as a test laboratory and attracts fascinated architects from all over the world. Anupama Kundoo is one of them and has been researching alternative building materials for many years.
The architect from Mumbai works with bricks made in local potteries. And not with energy-consuming machines, but in ovens that are made of the material they are supposed to burn. The regional bricks may be less hard than industrially manufactured pieces, but they are thinner and lighter. Used wisely, they also carry heavy loads. Kundoo is also experimenting with ferrocement: How can it be used economically and with as little steel consumption as possible?
Auroville was designed on the drawing board in 1968 and sees itself as a field of experimentation not only in terms of architecture. There is no such thing as private property; the individual is part of the community. And everything here belongs to the community. Anupama Kundoo feels inspired by the creativity and spirituality of the place. “The city is a laboratory in which we face the questions of the future without fear of failure.” The film captures this spirit.