Vienna Climate Biennale April 05 to July 14, 2024

Today it starts with more than 60 partner institutions in Vienna and the surrounding area. The festival area is located on the Nordwestbahnhof site, the Biennale headquarters are in the KunstHausWien.

Interdisciplinary, low-threshold and interactive: this is how the first Vienna Climate Biennale presents itself. The innovative climate art festival starts on April 5 and ends on July 14. For 100 days, the focus will be on the potential of art, design, architecture and science with regard to a sustainable future worth living and the social impact of climate change. The biennial, initiated by the City of Vienna's Climate, Culture and Economy departments, is organized by KunstHausWien, a museum of Wien Holding. Thanks to more than 60 cooperation partners, it covers the entire city.

Peter Hanke, City Councillor for Finance, Economy, Labor, International Affairs and Wiener Stadtwerke:

"The first Vienna Climate Biennale demonstrates Vienna's strengths in many ways: It approaches the defining issue of our time by sensitizing people to global climate change. The Vienna Climate Biennale also addresses topics from the economy, the financial sector and product design. Let's tackle the challenges of the future with creativity and innovation!"

Jürgen Czernohorszky, City Councillor for Climate, Environment, Democracy and Human Resources:

"Art and culture are able to make visionary contributions to shaping a climate-friendly future and reach a broad audience in the process. We must use this power to have an emancipatory and enlightening effect in order to achieve the climate transition. With its diverse and low-threshold educational program, the Vienna Climate Biennale aims to act as a beacon - as a platform for exchange and as a signpost to a climate-friendly future!"

Veronica Kaup-Hasler, City Councillor for Culture and Science:

"The climate crisis is a global challenge that can only be overcome if many people act together. The Vienna Climate Biennale is also driven by the spirit of taking collective social responsibility and bringing interdisciplinary impulses from art and science to the people. I am delighted that this forum of togetherness initiated by the City of Vienna is echoed in the large number of program partners: This is how the diverse ideas, visions and thoughts on the most pressing issues of our time are transported into the most diverse communities."

Gerlinde Riedl, Director of KunstHausWien, would like to thank the City of Vienna for making the festival possible and all partners for their valuable contributions to the program:

"The broad participation in the first Vienna Climate Biennale is an expression of an understanding of politics and culture that sees the future as a joint task. An approach that the Vienna Climate Biennale is also pursuing: The new art festival wants to build a sustainable collective network and empower as many people as possible to help shape the future through a holistic debate about the changes to our planet."

The extensive and multi-perspective program of the Vienna Climate Biennale focuses on cooperation and invites participation in the dialogue on future social developments.

Sithara Pathirana and Claudius Schulze, Director of the Vienna Climate Biennale:

"The program we have put together for the Vienna Climate Biennale presents a multi-layered view of the social challenge of the climate crisis. It focuses on participation, global networking and cooperation and appeals to a diverse audience: the art and cultural world, scientists, people from the neighborhoods, decision-makers from politics and business, children and young people and people who are hit hardest by the climate crisis."

City program with cooperation partners

Together with over 60 institutions, initiatives and organizations, the Vienna Climate Biennale is designing a programme to communicate the concerns of the climate debate to a broad audience: Foto Arsenal Wien presents Beate Gütschow's "Resistance. Flood. Brand." and Laure Winant's "From a Tongue We Are Losing" , two exhibitions to mark World Water Day 2024.

At Belvedere 21, Angelika Loderer's "Soil Fictions" and Oliver Ressler's "Dog Days Bite Back" deal with the effects of the climate crisis. The Weltmuseum Wien is showing "Unknown Artists of the Amazon", while the Künstlerhaus Vereinigung is showing "Kubus III" with works by Michael Goldgruber and Markus Guschelbauer (curated by Anke Armandi, Maria Grün and Lena Knilli).

With the exhibition "Vanishing Structures" , the Kunsthalle Exnergasse explores the issues associated with the disappearance of architecture, landscapes, people and traditions.

The Kunsthalle Wien - together with the Wiener Festwochen - is dedicated to connecting the cosmos and the sun with social and political movements.

The MAK is showing a newly conceived immersive spatial installation by the artist collective Troika (Eva Rucki, Conny Freyer and Sebastian Noel), which focuses on the multi-layered forms of non-human intelligence.

Among others, the Academy of Fine Arts and the University of Applied Arts Vienna, the Architekturzentrum Wien, the Brunnenpassage, the Haus der Geschichte Österreich, the Children's Office of the University of Vienna, the MuseumsQuartier Wien, the Stadtkino im Künstlerhaus and Admiral Kino as well as the TU Wien are an important part of the festival with events and projects.

The Klima Biennale Wien creates free spaces for activist groups in cooperation with the Wiener Festwochen and the Volkskundemuseum Wien. As a safe space, they provide retreat and networking opportunities to shape everyday activist life. The project takes place in the museum's Open Spaces.

Biennale Headquarters at KunstHausWien

The Biennale headquarters are located in the KunstHausWien, whose sustainable renovation is currently being finalized. "Into the Woods", the group exhibition of the first Vienna Climate Biennale curated by Sophie Haslinger, is dedicated to one of the most important ecosystems of our time: on two floors of the museum, 16 contemporary positions deal with the human influence on the state of the forests and their destruction on the one hand, and with the collective and symbiotic activities of the forest ecosystem on the other.

The Garage project space houses modular workshops where repair cafés and workshops are offered. The inner courtyard will have a temporary and sustainably built event space for talks, performances, concerts and community meetings: following the principles of re-use and upcycling, the "Climate Culture Pavilion" designed by the Breathe Earth Collective for the Graz 2020 Year of Culture will be adapted for the Vienna Climate Biennale. In June, KunstHausWien will also host the first Vienna Climate Summit - a new interactive symposium format aimed at the school and extracurricular education community with workshops as well as scientific and artistic impulses.

Festival area Nordwestbahnhof

An experimental field for urban coexistence and artistic perspectives for a future worth living in will be created at the festival site on the northwest station grounds. Curated by Lucia Pietroiusti (Head of Ecologies, Serpentine, London) and Filipa Ramos(Lecturer, Institute Art Gender Nature (IAGN), University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland (FHNW), Basel), the group exhibition "Songs for the Changing Seasons" brings together international artists to reflect on how art deals with the effects, consequences and reality of environmental change between mourning and transformation in a way that is as concrete as it is poetic.

Together with Isolde Rajek, StudioVlayStreeruwitz is designing the festival area and turning the former Nordwestbahnhof site into a temporary example of an urban utopia. With the "Klima Kantine" , a gastronomic offer will be created that focuses on the food supply of the future. In cooperation with Vienna Design Week, the overview exhibition "Design with a Purpose" will showcase outstanding green and circular design from Austria. In the "Biofabrique Vienna " - a pilot project of the Vienna Business Agency based on the bioregional design practice of Jan Boelen and his team - unused and reused resources are processed into new materials for design and architecture in cooperation with the Vienna University of Technology. In "Strategies & Solutions" , students from the University of Applied Arts Vienna, the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and the Vienna University of Technology are developing projects relating to art and climate.

Education, mediation and local participation

Projects such as the "Mobile School for Art & Sustainability" developed in cooperation with Soho Studios , the "Dock for Change " designed by the Children's Office of the University of Vienna, the "Future Lab" created in cooperation with Volkshilfe Wien and the "Educational Pathways" by FutureWorks are dedicated to actively involving children and young people in shaping a sustainable future.

With "Immediate Matters", the Climate Biennale is using an open call to bring together artistic positions from all over Vienna that deal with the challenges of the climate crisis in free project spaces, independent spaces and galleries.