The screening will be followed by a talk with Timo Huber, founding member of the architectural groups Zünd-Up and Salz der Erde, and Rudolf Kohoutek, urban researcher.
As part of the exhibition MISSING LINK: Strategies of a Viennese Architecture Group (1970–1980)
Admission: € 7 (including exhibition visit)
Free seating
The TV film Schöner Wohnen oder die Zerstörung des Wohnsarges [Better Living, or the Destruction of the Living Coffin] was produced under the aegis of Alfred Payrleitner in 1971 and broadcast on ORF, national public broadcasting, as a contribution to the series “Verbesserung Österreichs” [The improvement of Austria]. For the conservative television audience, this film must have presented quite a challenge in its day—in terms of form and content, it was more difficult to digest than most other experimental films on Austrian television of the early 1970s. ORF, which back then was the “standard for Austrian cultural life,” thus deserves a great deal of credit for not banning contemporary art and the latest art films to late night TV, but instead, showing them as an integral part of prime-time programming. The film Metro was submitted as a contribution to a competition called by the City of Vienna for the design of a subway station—and was rejected by the jury: the film deals, in its own special way, with the sterility of Viennese subway stations.
