Opening, March 28, 2012, 6.30 pm
Exhibition, March 29 – July 6, 2012
“This Really Happened Here” is a largescale research and exhibition project on alternatives for political, social and cultural development in the Austrian state of Carinthia. “This Really Happened Here” is a cooperative project by Kunstraum Lakeside and the Institute for Media and Communication Sciences at the University of Klagenfurt. As part of a seminar organized on the initiative of the Kunstraum and led by communication scientist Matthias Wieser and artist Hubert Lobnig, students did research in public and private archives on selected events in the alternative history of Carinthia, gathered material, and analyzed media reports on the events under study. Their work revolved around two case studies of economic, social and cultural self-organization in the late 1970s and a more recent example from 2006: the founding of the Longo maï cooperative near Eisenkappel in 1977, the legendary occupation of a house in Klagenfurt’s Reitschulgasse in 1979 with the goal of establishing an autonomous culture and communication center, and the installation of the “BombaClab” in two occupied military barracks on the Kreuzbergl in 2006, associated very similar demands to those made in 1979 on Reitschulgasse. These three very different incidents with their equally disparate courses of development (both successes and setbacks) formed the point of departure for research, interviews with those involved, and the gathering of materials illustrating connections with other concrete stories and their discussion in media and politics.
Hubert Lobnig (b. 1962 in Austria) lives and works in Vienna.
www.hubertlobnig.com
Curated by Christian Kravagna and Hedwig Saxenhuber.