HL fotoeins

Iris Andraschek in Vienna: telling the city who they are

For me, landmarks – a series of art works, for example – provide a network of “pins” for exploring and discovering parts of a city. That’s been my approach to Vienna’s 23 districts over the last 4 consecutive summers. Adding to the growing mind-map of memories, I’m restored by the excitement of the chase-and-find, among increasingly familiar surroundings and the frequency of new personal encounters.

Austrian artist Iris Andraschek works with photography, drawings. spatial installations, and video to explore and communicate ideas regarding cultural and societal relationships. Throughout Vienna, a number of Andraschek’s works are “visual interventions”, calling direct attention to the under-representation of women in the city’s public spaces.

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My Vienna: “Yellow Fog” by Olafur Eliasson

Above/featured: “Aus eigener Kraft”. Photo, 16 Jul 2025 (X70).

Is that red-hot steam?

It’s a warm and breezy summer evening, the colour of the light is illusory, and the blanket of mist is cool on contact.

At the southwest corner of the Am Hof square in central Vienna is the corporate headquarters of Verbund. Installed outside the building is Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson’s 2008 sculptural work “Yellow Fog“. The open public square becomes the arena to changing light, colour, and transparency; asking questions of perception and perspective. The display occurs every night for an hour after dusk, but not in winter.

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Vienna Grinzing Cemetery: Bernhard, Doderer, Ferstel, Mahler, Rosé

Above/featured: Grinzing cemetery, facing southeast. Photo, 26 May 2022.

Opening for its first burial in 1830, the Grinzing Cemetery in Vienna’s 19th district is modest in size, spread over an area of about 4.1 hectares (10 acres) and home to over 5000 graves. I highlight a number of notable people in arts and architecture, including connections with composer Gustav Mahler.

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Berlin’s Hamburger Bhf: no trains, only transition

Above: Appearing in Raleway font is the additional line: This is not a train station.”

There is no meat or bread here.

There are also no trains here. No longer.

There is only art, and in this instance, there is a contemporary art piece that’s a historical nod.

The artwork “Transition” (2009–present) by Polish artist Robert Kuśmirowski is housed in the Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, a museum of late-20th and 21st-century art in the German capital city of Berlin. Kuśmirowski’s piece refers to the building’s past and its present. “Transition” is a part of the ensemble “Unendliche Ausstellung” (Eternal Exhibition”) on permanent display throughout the Hamburger Bahnhof gallery-museum.

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My Berlin: The Parliament of Trees

Above: “Parlament der Bäume gegen Krieg und Gewalt.”

In Berlin’s government district is a patch of ground – a garden, really, with tall trees and a place that’s easy to overlook. The official name is “Parlament der Bäume gegen Krieg und Gewalt” (Parliament of Trees Against War and Violence), begun by artist Ben Wagin in 1990.

Wagin (1930–2021) began planting trees on land where the former Berlin Wall used to run near the historic Reichstag government building, as authorities began dismantling the physical wall. What remains of Wagin’s experiment is a piece of ground that acts as both memorial to what the Wall represented and fractured, and an aspiration for both modern Germany and Europe.

Of the many trees in this space, 16 of them represent the 16 modern federal states of Germany. There are also slabs of granite on which are engraved the names of the victims of the Wall. The “back” wall is painted with murals and messages, and in between are little paths and flower beds. I think Wagin also wants to remind us that in many parts in Berlin and throughout Germany, the former Wall dividing the city and the two former nations, respectively, have been reclaimed by nature.

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