II’m walking through the town of Bad Aussee in Austria’s Salzkammergut region, expecting a vision of depravity to emerge through the drizzle. Artists Wolfgang Müllegger and Georg Holzmann are cheerfully telling me how their large pink sculpture, recently installed in the town’s cafe park, has caused shock among locals. Many want it removed, they explain when we arrive at the artwork. It’s a pleasant enough pastel-pink piece of wood that could represent a pig in a slightly psychedelic children’s TV show.
I say the sculpture is completely harmless. “It’s just ‘different’,” says Georg, wearing a hoodie and yellow waterproof dungarees like a hipster fisherman. He points to a traditional stone statue of a historical figure in the park. “That’s what they’re used to.”
The pink sculpture is one of hundreds of exhibitions and events taking place across the region in 2024, as the nearby town of Bad Ischl and the wider Salzkammergut region become the first rural Alpine destination to be awarded European Capital of Culture (ECOC) status. The influx of contemporary art is a colourful explosion of creativity in an area that normally attracts tourists interested in historic villas, mountains and high-quality lederhosen.
For the project, Viennese design studio Lucy.D has redesigned rooms in guesthouses across the region, taking inspiration from local artisans working with wood and dried grass. Exhibitions are being staged in places previously closed to the public, from half-ruined villas to quarries. Many people say they are invigorated by the excitement. But there have also been aggressive reactions from some who see a threat to traditions from outsiders.
To reach the Salzkammergut, I take the Eurostar from London to Brussels, the European Sleeper to Berlin and then the cross-country train to Bad Ischl. I leave St. Pancras in the early afternoon and arrive at 6pm the next day. I spend the last half hour driving along the west side of the lake-like Traunsee.
Outside Bad Ischl train station, I’m greeted by a chrome sculpture by Vienna-born artist Xenia Hausner of a woman gasping for air with a petrol tank on her head. According to the cultural capital’s description, it’s a “sensual image of despair”, but otherwise the face of this city is Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Joseph I, despite being dead since 1916. He and his sideburns are featured on postcards in every souvenir shop, and busloads of tourists visit the Kaiservilla: Franz Joseph’s former residence. Now a museum, it’s currently hosting a major exhibition of sculptures by Ai Weiwei.
Just past Bad Ischl’s market, where two guys in lederhosen are playing the accordion, I come to the white-walled Sudhaus complex. It was once a salt processing plant, almost as important to Bad Ischl as Franz Joseph. Salzkammergut means “salt area,” and salt has been mined here for thousands of years. The centerpiece of the Sudhaus exhibition is Motoi Yamamoto’s Labyrinth: an intricate maze the Japanese artist created from grains of salt on the gallery floor. A video by Israeli artist Sigalit Landau is projected onto one wall, showing boots covered in salt crystals melting in an icy lake. Football-sized sculptures of human teeth carved from rock salt lie scattered on the floor.
Many Salzkammergut residents I meet agree that the content of the Capital of Culture Day is incredibly exciting, but one taxi driver says it is “too alien” and that the authorities should encourage traditional dances and costumes instead. Others are appalled by some of the more daring events.
The ECOC program began in January with a contemporary “Powder Dance” by choreographer Doris Uhlich, which included a lot of nudity and talcum powder and was livestreamed to a church in Bad Ischl. For a town with a long history of classical music that celebrates the great composer Franz Lehár, who owned a villa here, this must have felt radical.
Simone Barlian, an artist and curator from the nearby town of Gmunden, says she was attacked by a small mob of locals because of her role in organizing Capital of Culture events. “They said, ‘Those ugly naked bodies… Shame on you!'” she says. “I burst into tears.”
I meet Barlian and members of her all-female performance art collective Raumarbeiterinnen in a floating wooden sauna on Lake Traunsee that they built for the European Capital of Culture. Simone apologizes for making us wear swimwear. Local authorities have warned women not to show themselves naked here. Simone tells me that when a huge artwork depicting two women kissing was exhibited in Gmunden, some people spat on city officials in protest.
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“They just want traditional things in the country,” she says. “They’re not used to that. But the cool thing was that after the church livestream, the priests said, ‘Come on! Jesus has been shown half-naked in church for centuries, so don’t make such a fuss.'”
Elisabeth Schweeger, artistic director of events for the Salzkammergut European Capital of Culture, also rejects such criticism, saying she wants to show me the importance of bringing new art to the region. She drives me to a green memorial on the grounds of the Ebensee concentration camp, which held 27,278 prisoners from more than 20 countries between 1943 and 1945, including political prisoners and Jews. More than 8,000 of them died there or as a result of their imprisonment. The Nazis used enslaved prisoners to build infrastructure and stored stolen art in nearby mines. I get goosebumps as we enter a huge stone tunnel carved into the mountain as part of the Nazi project. As the temperature drops, I see a cascade of red threads. This is Where Are We Now by Osaka-born artist Chiharu Shiota: hundreds of kilometers of thin red threads hanging from the stone ceiling, with about 20 red and white dresses incorporated into them.
“Red makes you think of blood,” says Elisabeth. “But the white conveys an optimistic vision. It’s not all darkness here.”
Next to Shiota’s clothes hang information panels describing the suffering of the prisoners. Elisabeth is concerned that younger generations are not learning from the horrors of the past and hopes that art could remind them. “It’s a new way of thinking about how we deal with it,” she says.
Other big topics are also covered. American sound artist Bill Fontana has placed microphones in rivers created by the melting of the Schladming glacier, which is shrinking with global warming. The sound of the glacier is livestreamed to a nearby ice cave. Local artist Heidi Zednik has documented the effects of the climate crisis on fish and created works using filters from breeding ponds.
For other local artists, the status as European Capital of Culture is simply a chance to let their creativity run wild. Müllegger, the co-creator of Bad Aussee’s pink sculpture, makes his living building traditional wooden boats. Now he has the opportunity to present his passion project: brightly painted sculptures made of construction foam.
“We understand that our role here is to represent the area,” says Holzmann, Müllegger’s artistic collaborator. “But we have the right to express ourselves, and that doesn’t happen often here. Contemporary art usually only goes to the cities.”
Holzmann points to a life-sized “self-portrait” sculpture by Müllegger made of construction foam that resembles a half-melted mannequin. I agree, that’s much cooler than a boat. “We’re lucky to be part of it,” says Georg.
The train journey from London to Brussels was offered by Eurostar (from £51 one way). The journey from Brussels to Berlin was offered by European Sleeper (couchette from €79 one way). The journey from Berlin to Bad Ischl was offered by OmioAccommodation in Bad Ischl and Gmunden was provided by the Hubertushof (double room from 198 € B&B) and Seehotel Schwan (double room).from 98 € B&B), via Austria Tourism and Salzkammergut Tourism. .
