In a wishful internal world full of plants and grasses, artist Anna Peschke offers protection from the outside world, inviting visitors to linger.
The Raithaus in Vordernberg was built in 1840 to house the newly founded Montanuniversität. Just a few years after opening, however, the university was enlarged and relocated to Leoben. The impressive building in Vordernberg and the adjoining garden remained – and still exist today.
The young German artist Anna Peschke focuses on this place not by way of its widely recounted history, but by way of its emptiness. On the first floor of the building – that affords a wonderful view of the garden – she creates “Ophiopogon”, a little universe with its own rules and laws that invites visitors to stay a while, to lie down on beds of grass, or to slow down the pace of life whilst leafing through herbaria. It is a beryl-green internal world full of plants and grasses, a wistful and out of this world place.
Scenography, objects and direction Anna Peschke
Production assistance Uwe Lehr
Sound track Sebastian Elikowski-Winkler
Commissioned by steirischer herbst
steirischer herbst
Dramaturgy Martin Baasch
Production Jakob Schweighofer
Technical management Karl Masten
Project sponsor Holding Graz
Anna Peschke (DE)
Anna Peschke was born in 1978 in Heidelberg and works as a performer and director. In 2009 she completed her studies in applied theatre science in Giessen and has since focused mainly on free performance projects that cross the conventional limits of genre, blending theatre, new music and visual art. Her first production, the theatre installation “ Käppkkra”, premiered in 2009. Two years later her cooperation with Chinese soprano Nan Li and musician Song Yuzhe (“Mein chinesisches Herz singt dir ein Lied”) was awarded the Berlin Opera Prize. Peschke’s most recent project is entitled “Das Gräsertheater”, a public garden laid out in Mannheim in which the plants play the lead.