The Institute of Architecture and Landscape at Graz University of Technology focuses in many different ways on future processes and the consequences of real ecological, energetic as well as societal changes in our environment. As a guest of Austrian Sculpture Park, the Institute of Architecture and Landscape’s LandLab now interacts with the “In Then Out” sculpture of  Tobias Rehberger’s course.

The kick-off of the intervention is marked by veiling of the sculpture. Thus the existing sculpture becomes a static structure in the micro-climate of a greenhouse made of plastic film. By planting crops from our industrialised agriculture, an alteration of the sculpture is triggered through the growth cycle of the plants. For the duration of the intervention, corn plants will grow to a height and density at which the sculpture will be slowly overwhelmed, until its form ultimately disappears. Inside the circle of growing plants, the static fragmentation of the “In Then Out” sculpture coalesces slowly into an inclusive and living volume.

Thus the corn plants are woven into the original context of the Sculpture Park and thrive in its both physical and metaphorical atmosphere. They may be recognised as a local artefact, the artificiality of which is specifically indigenous in the Graz Feld area (OUT) and now, having been artificially increased in its efficiency as an agricultural plant, will interact with the artificiality of Sculpture Park (IN). OUT THEN IN.

Thus ia&l’s intervention develops from sculptural shape to per-form-ance, in which plants are recognised as acting protagonists. This focus helps making new creative spaces of action between culture and environment visible.

In addition to the unveiling of corn plants from their greenhouse, “events” are planned in which the corn cobs are made a culinary object of discussion and the materiality of the intervention becomes part of the human organism; culture and environment in intrinsic interconnectedness with our everyday practice.

Conception:

Prof. Klaus K. Loenhart, Andreas Boden, Christoph Walter Pirker

Collaboration:

Annalisa Cammelli, Andreas Marlovits, Jose Javier Perez Urizar, Christoph Räuschenböck, Ivnik Tadel, Patrick Vinicki

www.ial.tugraz.at

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