Geeky Gourmet: A Tasting Menu by Tablet
Perching on a white-upholstered bench in a low ceilinged and cosily lit modern eatery, I was tucking hungrily into a dish of crocodile wrapped in bacon. Yet the exotic dishes on offer are not the oddest aspect of eating at Viereck on Johannesgasse in Vienna’s 1st District. More unusual was the fact that, bravely resisting [...]
Gallery Run: Subjective Objects
We have a strange relationship to objects: we acquire them, covet them, project meaning onto them. Artists go further, questioning what our relationship is to objects, not taking it for granted, interpreting the objects in unexpected ways. Whether it’s through pop art, found objects, or exotic artifacts, it’s the artist’s job to reinvent, relocate and [...]
Damaso Reyes and The Europeans
With the reconstruction of European identity on his mind, Damaso Reyes set out to challenge our picture of everyday life in Europe in the new millennium. The Europeans, a fresh and nuanced photojournalistic project on European society, focuses on change in the long term, on changes – social, political and economic – occurring within Europe and to European people. In his photos, Reyes [...]
Tricky Women: Vienna Celebrates Female Animators
The Pillsbury Doughboy, Mickey Mouse, the Simpsons – whether a Disney character in the movies, a hand-rendered family TV series, or a 3D computer-generated Hello Kitty, what we have come to know as objects, caricatures, forms that move and appear to live and breathe, are created by a process known as animation. The process [...]
Sweet Seduction
I’m not much of a sweet tooth. When I call my husband to pick up a must for tonight’s dinner, it is more likely a request for lamb’s lettuce or pumpkinseed oil or pecorino than for the stuff of other people’s cravings – chocolates, Sachertorte, candies. But Vienna is changing me for the sweeter. Edible and innovative art To spread the [...]
Diagonale: How to Snatch Defeat From the Jaws of Victory
I pulled into Graz just in time for the gala opening, threw on a fancy suit, refreshed my hair and make-up, and jumped into a cab prepared to sidestep the paparazzi and compete with the stars of stage and screen, entering Austria’s premier film festival at the Helmut-List-Halle. No red carpet. OK. But the hordes were there all right, thronging the entrance [...]
Favoriten: Migrants and More
Since last Dec., Vienna’s 10th District of Favoriten has once again been connected to the wider world, as the new Hauptbahnhof at Wiedner Gürtel opened its first section, and thousands of commuters and visitors flooded through the new station, easily recognisable from a distance by its dramatic, diamond-shaped roof. Ever since construction began in 2010, [...]
Beyond Kebab – Vienna’s Turkish Destinations
I needed a vacation – and now! Not in six weeks when I took my spring holiday. So in search of some spice to ward off Vienna’s chill, I plunged into the city’s Turkish and Arab offerings. Though I’ve travelled to large swathes of the Arab world, I wanted to experience it in an Austrian [...]
Monstrous Monuments: Vienna’s Giant Anti-Aircraft Towers
On 9 April 1938, Adolf Hitler stood before an audience of 5,000 in the vast hall of the Nordwestbahn train station. He spoke of their city, just absorbed into the Third Reich, as a pearl in need of a worthy setting. Few could have known that setting would be a noose of concrete anti-aircraft towers [...]
