The airplane descends. The slight shaking from the turbulence and the extra light from the lifted windows wakes me up and I look out across the land as we glide over quaint looking red-roofed houses and ambling green hills full of grapevines. The Danube river shimmers and soon I can make out the city of Vienna, called the city of dreams after Sigmund Freud who lived and worked in Vienna. From my window seat I can see so many places that I want to visit. I want to go to the top of that Funky art tower, see the old Nazi gun emplacements, the giant communist building, little country shacks in the middle of the woods, walk around the little lakes, over the many pedestrian bridges and bike down the long island between the Danube and the canal.
I’ll be living here for three months in the 2nd district while working on the 4 Aces public art experience, a collaboration between Perola Bonfanti and I with our friend Zel Nonnenberg and a few more talented artists.
My boyfriend Orien and I leave the airport and meet Perola and Zel at our new apartment in the 2nd district. It is huge and spacious with lot’s of light. In NY it would cost a fortune, but it was a third of the cost here in Vienna.
Our “working class neighborhood” is wonderful. It’s very international with lots of cafes, smoky restaurants and lovely parks. There is an asian market right downs stairs and an Indian grocery down the street. We are right next to Prater amusement park which is home to the famous Wiener Riesenrad, (German for “Viennese giant wheel”) one of the oldest ferris wheels in the world. It was the tallest from 1920-1985 and was actually supposed to be destroyed in 1916, but they didn’t have enough money to carry it out and thus it was saved. It had a starring role in The Third Man, a 1949 British film noir set in Vienna, directed by Carol Reed.
Perola and I will spend much of these three months finishing the paintings for the portals that we will install on the streets here this September. We will also be going through the long bureaucratic process of checking off permissions for our desired portal locations throughout the 1st and 7th districts of Vienna and planning the final installation.
I will explain more about the project in my next post. And now, we’re going to find some bikes to buy and explore this town…