Open Art Space Esteplatz

1. International Festival of
Art, Culture and Architecture
Vienna - Bratislava - Györ - Budapest, 23 - 25 September 2005

Patronage: President of the State of Austria, Dr. Heinz Fischer
Opening: City Council DI Rudolf Schicker
City Council for urban development and traffic, Vienna
Welcoming: District representative Erich Hohenberger

Oasis: a place of peace, safety, or happiness in the midst of trouble

The festival  O A S E  creates temporary transnational art spaces in public space and takes place simultaneously in Vienna, Bratislava and Budapest. Artists, cultural actors and architects of different nations present thought and practice models for a new interpretation of urban space. The aims are to convert public space and urban structures for the transmission of contemporary art production and to visualize cultural network processes of both local and border crossing natures.

OASE stands for outlining urban utopia and for generating environments which relate to the metaphor OASIS : spaces of encounters and communication, use of the element water in creative processes and the focus on existential human emotions such as happiness and longing.

The festival in Vienna will be realized at the Esteplatz - a square in the 3rd district at which the KulturAXE studio is located - from 23 - 25 September 2005 with online transmissions from Budapest and Bratislava. The programme encomprises projects in public space, Eat-Art, performances, interpretative arts, concerts, poetry and temporary architecture projects by artists from Austria, Hungary, Slovakia and other nations. A three day Open Air Cinema entitled "It's a Wonderful Life" will take place in cooperation with VOLX Kino, Vienna, and curators of the three nations. The festival will be accompanied by exhibitions in the adjacent project spaces, studios and galleries.

In 2005 KulturAXE celebrates its tenth anniversary. The foundation and purpose of KulturAXE relate directly to the change 1989 and the conversion of borders to our neighbours. Since then a multitude of project cooperations have been realized with partners from CEE and non-European nations. OASE aims at conveying transnational contents to the public, at transmitting contemporary fields of action in arts and to promote a new understanding of different cultural identities.

O A S E Festival
Film programme, Open Air Cinema,
Vienna-Budapest-Györ-Bratislava
23-25 September 2005

"ITS A WONDERFUL LIFE"

"Speak our secret into your hands
And hold it in between
Plunge your hands into the water
And drown it in the sea
.... It's a wonderful, wonderful life
If you can find it"
Nick Cave

"Wonderful Life", a privilege of the few or the merit of the "simple"? Is happiness - and the longing for it - a subjective perception, a collective experience, a social connotative burden, a culturally coded emotion? Todays Society "in pursuit of happiness" - which by its origin means that each person is born with the same rights, and as such also with the same right to bliss - foresees the fulfillment of its members in the successful achievement of an individual way of life. Between the parameters of happy life - leading themselves ad absurdum -, the tightrope walk between cliché, irony, subversion, propaganda and the personal statement to happiness, zest for life and ways of life, the film series "It's a wonderful Life" presents positions of contemporary film production as proposed by an international programme commission from Austria, Hungary and Slovakia.

Film & video programme commission:

• Rita Kálmán, Studio of Young Artists Association, Budapest
• Eszter Ágnes Szabó, lecturer, University of Applied Arts, Budapest
• László László Révész, Budapest / New York
• Jenö Hartyándi, Festival Director, Laszlo Sipöcz, MEDIAWAVE Int. Film & Music Festival
• Andreas Kous, DI Berndt Anwander, St Balbach Art Produktion, VOLXkino, Vienna
• Hofstetter Kurt, media artist, Vienna
• KulturAXE, Vienna
• BURUNDI, Bratislava
• Billboart Gallery, Bratislava