special – Marc Lins

Mensch Feldkirch

Marc Lins — Wed, 22 May 2024 12:33:00 +0000

Mensch Feldkirch

Marc Lins, Monika Schnitzbauer & Sigi Ramoser, Sägenvier Design Kommunikation

100 Portraits of a typical small town

The American author Susan Sontag writes in her essay collection ‘On Photography’: People who look good in a photo consider themselves attractive. Photography is thus not merely a copy of the world but gives it meaning.

‘Tschik Olga’

The Mayor

The Monk

The Pharmacist

The Fire Chief

The Bandmaster

The Dentist

The Organist

The Barber

The Pub Owners

The Sporting Ace

The Woodcarver

The Therapist

The Nuns

The Potter

The Cafe Owners

The Buddhist

The Dancer

The local Real Estate Tycoon

The Punk

The Lord of the Castle

The Farmers

The Recycling Yard Guy

Mensch Feldkirch is a Meaning Machine. When, for example, Tschik Olga (as her customers affectionately call her) moves from her small kiosk into the world of portraits, she forces us to see her in a different light. Her tobacco shop becomes a time travel in images, away from the hustle of quick exchanges of cigarettes for money. Olga then represents a Feldkirch that will soon no longer exist: the world of small people in small shops in a small town. No glamour. No kitsch. No longing. It is what it is. One could surely drop in, put on Carlos Santana’s Soul Sacrifice, light up a Havana or a Krummer Hund, and chat with her. She wouldn’t be surprised, she has seen a lot. Tschik Olga.

Marc Lins has photographed people in Feldkirch.
Across all social biotopes. Small and big people. Powerful and powerless. Men and women. Public and hidden. Loud and quiet. Snapshots. Urbs, Urbis. A call from the city: Look here, here we are, here we live, here we work. Marc Lins’ perspective is that of a contemporary who works at eye level with his protagonists. He, who has also roamed the urban canyons of New York, lets us rediscover Feldkirch: as a place of different viewing – and thus defines the urban space as a movement zone for people, where life unfolds far from glossy aesthetics. One almost wants to use the famous and notorious word “authentic”. In this sense, Mensch Feldkirch is a picture book that tells us a thousand little stories. Of strangely familiar otherness in a living space grammatically populated by various personal pronouns: of you, of me, of us, of you all.

For every kiss you give me, I’ll give you three. Ronettes Be My Baby

Text: Hermann Brändle

Random Portraits

Marc Lins — Wed, 26 Jun 2024 18:56:24 +0000

Random Portraits

To take on portrait photography is to commit to an eternal quest for authenticity. It is about finding beauty in imperfection, grace in the mundane, and depth in simplicity.

Keanu’s Bday

Erich Joham

Istanbul Birdman

Istanbul Simit

Christian Anwander | Photographer

Mathias Kessler | Artist

Hubert Dobler | Artist

Tatyana Murray | Artist

Edi Frauneder | Chef

Martin Real | Chef

Alois Kronschlaeger | Artist – “Habitat”, Site Lab

Alois Kronschlaeger | Artist – “Spire”, Site Lab

Alois Kronschlaeger | Artist – “Untitled (Basin & Range)”, MOCA Tucson

Daniel Büchel | Architect

LAAC | Architects

Lukas Böckle | Bon Viveur

AO& Collective

Philipp Furtenbach | AO& Collective

Dejan | DJ, Entertainer, Entrepreneur

RNDM | Music Producer, DJ

Nicola Conte Filippelli | Actor, Artist ✝︎

Cuba Club

Marion DIetl | Plastic, Reconstructive, and Aesthetic Surgeon

Nikolaus Gohm | Artist

Marc Lins | Artist Selfportrait

Lax Bar

Marc Lins — Mon, 01 Jul 2024 09:12:54 +0000

Lax Bar

Christoph Meier, Ute Müller, Robert Schwarz, Lukas Stopczynski – Vienna, Austria

Walk-in Art Installation | Wiener Festwochen

The square is the foundation of a regular geometric grid. In 1908, Adolf Loos used the equilateral rectangle to highlight the orthogonal orientation of the interior of his so-called Kärntner Bar, the first American-style bar in Vienna. Originally conceived as a stand-up bar, the Loos Bar, as it is called today, is an urban interior, a social space transgressing class divisions and a condensed social stage. Adolf Loos believed that architecture goes beyond the functional to create resonating spaces for a liberal and democratic society. Consequently, for him, the language of architecture articulates itself not only through an abstraction of means, but also through recourse to everyday typologies. Things happen in places.

Designed by Christoph Meier, Ute Müller, Robert Schwarz and Lukas Stopczynski, the Lax bar, a copy of the Loos Bar, emphasizes this aspect of the social sculpture that turns viewers into actors.

In contrast to the original, however, it is a walk-in sculpture with a makeshift character and only officially operates five times. The Lax bar reduces architecture to its very essence and centers around a seemingly simple design that underlines the sheer impact of the material while at the same time rejecting the material opulence of Loos’ original version.

The bar’s displacement, its own temporality as a ‘different place’, is also celebrated. When the door to this inconspicuous building opens, the visitors, like Alice in Wonderland, fall down a kind of rabbit hole: They enter a completely white tiled room that could be anywhere, that seems different from the outside world and yet is part of it in a strangely displaced way.

A variation of the Loos Bar in terms of proportion and interior design, the Lax bar also makes use of mirrors as the basic form of pictures as a way of inscribing visitors into the architecture. While the side mirrors are mounted in such a way that one cannot see one’s reflection, the mirrored ceiling transforms the lively space into a mise en abyme, an infinite image within the image.

The Lax Bar is already the artists’ third edition of the legendary bar designed by Adolf Loos. In Los Angeles, the adaption of the Viennese architectural icon was obvious. A residency at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture in the Mackey Apartments of R.M. Schindler (a well-known student of Loos) inspired the creation of this first DIY-style replica of the bar in 2015. In a garage behind the modernist apartment building, marble became OSB, glass became mosquito mesh fabric, wood became cardboard.

In his 1979 essay “Der Loos-Gedanke” the Viennese architect Hermann Czech wrote that Loos’ rejection of ornament was primarily directed against those forms “that are not thought”. The abstract thought does not find translation into an abstract form, but a specific solution develops out of it.
This is perhaps the LAX bar’s closest correspondence to the Loos Bar: to translate the concept of a work of art as a social place into the format of a festival—via a sculptural intervention that rethinks the idea of social sculpture.

Text: Vanessa Joan Müller

Der Steppensee

Marc Lins — Sun, 30 Jun 2024 11:57:32 +0000

Der Steppensee

Excerpt from the upcoming book project

The Neusiedlersee (Hungarian: Fertő tó, where “fertő” literally means “swamp”) is, like Lake Balaton, one of the few steppe lakes in Europe and the largest lake in Central Europe without a natural outflow. It is located predominantly in Austria and to a much lesser extent in Hungary.

The lake is characterized by its reed belt, shallow depth, and mild but windy climate. Its unique fauna and flora are protected by the establishment of the Neusiedler See-Seewinkel and Fertő-Hanság National Parks, as well as its designation as a UNESCO World Heritage Site under the name Fertő/Neusiedler See Cultural Landscape. The shallow lake is primarily fed by rainfall and drained through evaporation. As a result, the water level is subject to weather conditions and naturally fluctuates significantly. On average, the water level is around 115.45 meters above sea level, with a maximum depth of only about 2 meters. The intra-annual fluctuation range is between 60 and 80 centimeters. The lowest water levels are measured in August.

Located only some 40 Miles south from Vienna, Lake Neusiedl has been a popular weekend & vacation destination ever since the 1920’s, especially for the Viennese, seeking to escape the city.

A somewhat wealthier group of visitors own or rent one of the approximately 450 habitable Pile-Dwellings, located by the vast Reed-Belts surrounding most of the lake’s shore line. The maximum depth of Lake Neusiedl is 6 feet at maximum, yet these dwellings can only be reached by boat. Others own boats or even a yacht and the daily tourists rent small boats, paddle boats or excursion boats, in order to satisfy their recreational demands…

Spire

Marc Lins — Sat, 22 Jun 2024 14:17:39 +0000

Spire

Alois Kronschlaeger, Sitelab – Grand Rapids, Michigan

Spire, encompassed three floors of an abandoned commercial building in downtown Grand Rapids. This installation was curated by SiTE:LAB, a local nonprofit that coordinates temporary art projects, and sponsored by the University of Michigan School of Art & Design. Like most of Kronschlaeger’s work, Spire demonstrated a preoccupation with environment and light, exploring the ways in which new materials can revive and transform a space.

Spire became a true community project employing four local residents over a six-week construction period. It reached 72 feet high, 32 feet wide and 32 feet deep with materials consisting of 1,000 12-foot wooden 2″ x 2″s, 10 rolls of 100 foot-long mesh, and 100 gallons of paint.

The artist’s vision for Spire was to see how a temporary art installation could transform a space on a large scale. What would happen if a work outgrew the existing architecture? The result included new architectural vantage points, new reflections of light and a new relationship to the ground on each of the floors.

Untitled (Basin & Range)

Marc Lins — Wed, 22 May 2024 13:23:33 +0000

Untitled (Basin & Range)

Alois Kronschlaeger, MOCA Tucson – Tucson, Arizona

Untitled (Basin and Range) is an immersive, site-specific installation that brings an unexpected, monumental geographic feature into the Great Hall. We are used to engaging with the classic “basin and range” topography in the landscape, but constructing this landmass in a museum gallery setting radically reorients the viewer’s sense of place and scale, providing an unprecedented art experience. With three simple materials and inspiration from the Western landscape viewed from his plane window as he flew toward Tucson, Alois Kronschlaeger has radically transformed the Great Hall of MOCA with Untitled (Basin & Range).

Throughout the basin and range region are extensive examples of the result of shifting tectonic plates that create our region’s distinctive terrain. Moving this landscape indoors shifts our sense of both scale and of time, as we are reminded of the presence of “geological time” relative to our sense of day-to-day time. This experience is both awe-inspiring and humbling, reminiscent of Edmund Burk’s notions of “the sublime and the beautiful.” John McPhee, in his exquisite tome Basin and Range, suggests geology is virtually a literary exercise, a form of close reading of the landscape that also produces a “fountain of Metaphor”. Displacement, disorientation, and awesome beauty are all inherent in the topology and that experience becomes incarnate in Kronschlaeger’s evocative installation.

The installation is at once allusive-it is essentially a classic basin and range mountainous topography incongruously installed in a museum gallery space and easily part of a long tradition of landscape art-and ultimately highly abstract and entirely non-referential. The dizzying optical effects produced by the mesh and the continually shifting reflected and refracted light produced by the translucent paint create a highly dramatized cinematic space reminiscent of Moholy-Nagy’s Light Space Modulator, writ large.

The superstructure of the installation is comprised of a wooden grid, which is then draped with wire mesh. Translucent paint is then poured over the mesh, creating a magical light environment that shifts throughout the day. The disorienting optical effects created as one moves through the space are both profound and constantly at play as the daylight and the seasonal sun angle shift to create a perpetual “light space modulator”. Kronschlaeger’s work is heir to the Russian Constructivists via the so-called Minimalists of the 1960s. Primary engagements with the liminal space between architecture and sculpture interest all of these artists-essentially, how do objects psychically alter the space they occupy? How does the human body, as our primary metric of scale, relate to the altered space?

Porsche 911t

Marc Lins — Sat, 22 Jun 2024 22:03:07 +0000

Porsche 911t

Ferdinand Porsche & Erwin Komenda

The Porsche 911 is the successor to the Porsche 356. Commonly referred to as “Neunelfer” or simply “Elfer”, this car is the most well-known vehicle from the Stuttgart-based company and is considered the epitome of the brand.

Porsche introduced the model in September 1963. Before the start of 911 series production in September 1964, 13 prototypes were built as Porsche 901.
Porsche presented the model, later known as the “original model,” at the IAA in Frankfurt am Main in September 1963 under its internal development number as Porsche 901. However, the designation had to be changed shortly after the sales launch in November 1964 because Peugeot had secured the rights to all three-digit numbers with a “0” in the middle as designations for its car models.

It is said that Ferdinand Porsche had among his design criteria for the bodywork the requirement that at least one set of golf clubs could fit in the trunk, as the typical Porsche clientele had missed this feature in the 356. However, the main criterion for the bodywork was high recognizability as a Porsche and similarity to the previous model. Additionally, the rear engine was a fixed criterion listed in the bodywork developers’ specifications.

Alfa Giulia GT 1600 Junior

Marc Lins — Sun, 23 Jun 2024 08:46:08 +0000

Alfa Giulia GT 1600 “Junior”

Giorgetto Giugiaro for Bertone

The Alfa Romeo GT 1600 Junior was introduced in 1972, to plug the gap between the GT 1300 Junior and the larger-engined 2000 GTV. The basic body shape shared by all models was designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro for Bertone.

It was one of his first major projects for Bertone, and borrowed heavily from his earlier design for the Alfa Romeo 2000 Sprint/2600 Sprint. The balance of glass and metal, the influence of the shape of the front and rear glass on the shape of the cabin, and the flat grille with incorporated headlamps were groundbreaking styling features for the era.

Renault R25 Baccara

Marc Lins — Sun, 07 Jul 2024 22:30:57 +0000

Renault R25 Baccara

Gaston Juchet & Robert Opron

When it was introduced in 1984, the Renault R25 represented a significant improvement in all aspects compared to its predecessors, the R20 and R30. Its features and overall performance where quite competitive, with the turbocharged V6 versions even holding their own against the Mercedes-Benz 200-300 and BMW 5 Series.

Thanks to the excellent aerodynamics – and in stark contrasts to this photo-series, showing the car only in front of gas stations – the gas consumption is among the lowest in the top models. Well-designed rolling trains, cured by the excessive flexibility of R20 and R30, offer lively and healthy road behaviour, barely tempered by a slight tendency to understeer and by net torque effects on turbo V6.

The 1988 restyling (new front, new rear lights, new interior materials, slightly revised front axle) and the arrival of more powerful engines allowed the Renault R25 to withstand the arrival of the Peugeot 605 and Citroen XM in 1989. Often associated with the socialist government of the 1980s, the stretched R25 Limousine, with an extended-wheelbase of 22.7 centimeters or 8.9 inches, was indeed the favourite car of the French politicians of the left of this period. At the time, the “R25 gang” was sometimes referred to the french socialist leaders. Nevertheless, it was appreciated by political personalities of different coleurs as well. During those times when the President of France used an armored limousine, various coachbuilders, such as Boonaker, also provided bulletproof R25 variants. The car shown here is a Phase III R25 ‘Baccara’ which was also available in Alcantara for the upholstery, doors, dashboard and even the sky, as well as real elm burl for the door strips and the gear knob.

Urban Foxxes

Marc Lins — Sun, 07 Jul 2024 19:36:28 +0000

Urban Foxxes

When Night Falls