schwerer Nebel, Wien (not realized)

In the mid-19th century Kaiser Franz Joseph I conceived the Heldenplatz in Vienna as the crowning achievement of the Kaiserforum and the Ringstraße. The historic forecourt of the Hofburg should also connect to the Habsburg collections and lies behind the Kunsthistorisches Museum and the Naturhistorisches Museum. As a symbolic form of rule a temporarily installed and centrally oriented pentagon emphasizes the absolutist structure of the site and subverts it in the next moment. The pentagon, from which rises light and white fog, appears to disappear; in time the sculpture forms an ephemeral anti-monument to the transformation of the Heldenplatz. Traditional lines of sight are disrupted; a diffuse fog and bright light superpose the militaristic glorification of the dynasty—two equestrian statues and centrally laid out architecture. A cathartic free space arises which holds the idealized heroism of the past at a critical distance. (JO)