The Austrian festival steirischer herbst began in 1967. Since then, the town of Graz has hosted many of the major names in contemporary art, music, theatre and performance. We started from the idea of what would it be like, if the locations could somehow tell you what they’d seen: A woman walks down the street on a sunny morning covered in human hair stuck on with honey (Lisa Stroembeck, In and Out, 1997), a man ignites a rocket from his trousers (Slava Mizin, Flight, 2001), 48 boxes filled with water are exploded at the top of the stairs leading to the church (Roman Signer, Aktion mit 48 Kisten, 1993).
In order to realise this idea, we worked with the journalists Johann Puntigam and Anna-Katharina Laggner and interviewed a broad range of people about what they’d seen. From passersby in the street, the artists involved, curators and festival directors and regular festival visitors, a huge range of experiences were recorded in the place where they happened. This app then plays this material to you in the correct location as you walk around Graz.
You also don’t have to be in Graz to experience the project – you can navigate the map by hand, clicking on the pointers to hear the interviews and sliding the bar up to read more informaiton or see pictures, finding links for further information.
Herbst Fragmente can be downloaded to your smartphone for free (iPhone and Android). It was commissioned by sterischer herbst and programmed by Peter Vasil and Sebastian Deßler. Interviews and research Anna-Katharina Laggner and planb. Text editing Stefan Schwar
Herbst Fragmente is based on an original project, fortySomething, which was commissioned by steirischer herbst in 2007. It used the mscape software and PDA technology, soon superceeded by smartphones.