A/C CITY
The City as a Climate Machine
Sarajevo, Belgrade, Tirana, 2024
As global temperatures rise, cities are experiencing an intensified heat crisis — paradoxically – often exacerbated by the very systems designed to cool them. Modern architecture, dominated by glass facades and sealed windows, owes its existence to the widespread use of air conditioning. However, this technological marvel, once a symbol of progress, now threatens the essence of urban life. As people retreat in-doors, the vibrant pulse of the city — its unexpected street encounters and communal spaces — begins to fade.
...
A/C CITY, 6-Screen-Installation, Loop, 8:00 Min.
Remote Control, Image
Installation Views, THE LAST GREAT SMOKE (together with Mladen Miljanović), Manifesto Gallery, Sarajevo
Essay by Adna Muslija
About
TIME IS RUNNINGEvery Sunday at SunrisePrater Hauptallee, Vienna, 2024
“Every Sunday, I ran at sunrise around the Lusthaus. The same path, the same circle—but the moment was never the same. The rising sun shifted, the light changed, and so did I.”
TIME IS RUNNING offers a deeply personal yet universal meditation on time, place, and ritual. Over the course of a year, Wolfgang Lehrner recorded his runs. Each of the 52 videos takes you on a run around Vienna's Lusthaus, every Sunday precisely at sunrise, capturing the golden moment when the day unfolds.
Time is Running,
Multi-Channel Video Installation
About
RUNNER’S HIGH immerses viewers in the visceral and transcendent experience of a runner’s euphoria. The accidental recording of the camera inside Lehrner’s jacket serves as both a literal and metaphorical lens: a disoriented yet intimate perspective of movement, breath, and pulse...
Runner’s High, Video, 3:06 Min., loop
THE CITY WITHOUT QUALITIES
Tracing the Lost or Last Mitteleuropean Archipelago
Trieste, 2023
The City Without Qualities is a fictional metropolis based on a real city where national claims, multicultural ties and divided loyalties overlap. Inspired by the novel „Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften“ by Robert Musil (1930), Wolfgang Lehrner traces the last or lost mitteleuropean archipelago and thereby generates „The City without Qualities“.
The City without Qualities finds it much easier to explain what it is not, what differentiates it from any other reality, than to define its own identity. The City Without Qualities loves its heterogeneity, its diversity of elements that cannot be merged into a unity. It is rich in contrasts,
but above all it seeks its reason of existence in these very contrasts
and in their indissolubility...
City Without Qualities, Image Series
Lost or Last, Image Series
City Without Qualities, Video, 11:15 Min.
Exhibition Views THE TALE OF TWO CITIES
Exhibition Views CITY WITHOUT QUALITIES
Essay by Lisa Moravec
About
FOLLOWERS
Walking in the Footsteps of Giants
Mexico City, 2022
Followers is an homage to the idea that everything is always a quote.
Where do I belong and where do I like to go –
which person, group or belief do I support, admire or follow?
What is our personal reference point to the world:
Is it the local condition – the city,
the individual or his/her public representation – the persona,
or Mother Earth – nature?
In times of social media we all have become followers.
Walking through the streets of Mexico City – which are named
after foreign cities or the greatest writers, humanists or scientists –
while following others, one gets an idea of what it is like to get lost
by following strangers in real life.
Follow Personas, Walking the Streets of Polanco
Follow Cities, Walking the Streets of Juárez and Nápoles
Follow Nature, Walking Where the Streets have No Name
Essay by Lorena Moreno Vera
About
EL PARAÍSO
Modern Mexico’s Utopia
Unidad Independencia, Mexico City, 2018-2022
Unidad Independencia was planned as an independent city outside the city under the guiding idea of coexistence and habitability. It was the realization of the vision of progress, welfare and housing for more than 10,000 working-class residents with something - much more - than a roof over their heads.
The inauguration took place on September 20, 1960 – as part of the 150th anniversary of Mexico's independence – therefore the name of this architectural ensemble.
This period was characterised by the opening of Mexico to the world and the definition of the image of a modern, post-revolutionary nation with a strong commitment to its own history.
The social housing project was developed by the Mexican state (IMSS) by merging Le Corbusier's vision of the radiant city with pre-Columbian elements to reflect what was considered part of the national identity...
El Paraíso, Video, 8:28 Min.
About
MEDINEO – THE SERIES
Episode 01 – 09
Mediterranean Coast / Studio, 2021
Taking the ever-growing archives as a point of departure, Wolfgang Lehrner's MEDINEO: The Series combines more than twenty Mediterranean cities into a real-fictional narrative that explores various key aspects of the subject: a true mosaic of ideas.
01 The Past Is A Foreign Country
02 The Absence Of Color
03 Divided By The Sea, Connected By The Ocean
04 Here, There And No Where
05 Coastline To Skyline
06 Not Land, Not Sea
07 Losing Ground
08 Onto The Other Side
09 Room With A View
Essays by Lorena Moreno Vera
Essay by Walter Seidl
About
MEDINEO
The City of Ports
Somewhere on the Mediterranean Coast, 2019/2020
Medineo is a fictional city and yet real. This city on the Mediterranean Sea has no defined place and cannot be found on any map. Medineo, which pretends to be new rather than old, could exist almost anywhere on the Mediterranean coast. The individual port may have lost its importance, but the common cultural history still connects all the port cities and guarantees endless change. A universal place for departure and arrival, conflict and cooperation, contrasts and similarities, vision and reality – ready to define the new flexible Mediterranean state of mind.
Exhibition Views WORLD CITY
Medineo, Image Series
City of Ports, Multi-Screen-Installation
Arrival / Departure, Image Series
White City, Image Series
38 Houses, Image Series
Essay by Mladen Banjac
About
THE STANDARD CITY
London 2017/2018
A walk around the world capital. That means starting at 0°. Which is the meridian used to help find your location. Useful for the vast majority of people around the globe. Zero is also a major motive. With regard to maximisation.
Straightforward, as the global banker recommends. Dubai, Hong Kong, Beijing, Tokyo and NYC – all in line. That means coexistence. World-time begins with the right timing. Strolling around a cosmopolitan city, or rather a global village, is like circumnavigating the entire globe. In orbit – for all eternity, or soon perhaps only in our memory?
The Standard City, Image Series
0° 00′ 00″, Video Series
London Hop-On/Hop-Off, Image Series
Walk To Heathrow, Image Series
Exhibition Views LOSING LONDON (together with Beat Streuli), Zeller van Almsick, Vienna
Essay by Jade Niklai
About
CITY WITHOUT NAME
Mexico City, 2017
Without end or face - a lost island that provides plenty without promising anything. City of contradictions, city at the limit, city of cities. The first step ignites the narrative - strolling into the big unknown. While the plot is lost, the city is alive. The tourist of everyday life commutes between the self and the world. Space is forged where there is no emptiness to fill. The city with no name summons, seduces, commands. Breaking into the unknown, losing oneself in order to discover.
City at the Limit, Image Series
City Without Name, Image Series
CDMX Hop-On/Hop-Off, Image Series
Bulevar Periférico, 3-Screen-Installation, Loop, 6:00 Min.
Familiar Stranger, Image Series
Exhibition Views CITY WITHOUT NAME, Zeller van Almsick, Vienna
Screening and Book Presentation CIUDAD SIN NOMBRE, Alumnos47, Mexico City
About
METRO / POLIS
Athens, 2016
One might say that Athens is the city of cities – the cradle of democracy, science and occidental philosophy, it has once again become a focal point – albeit for European crisis and criticism.
Seen as a point of culmination or turning point, crisis is a moment of in-depth deliberation and new departures. Athens can thus be regarded as a European starting point and arena...
The Image of the Global Polis, Image Series
Interrogation of the Periphery, Image Series
The Everyday and the Ordinary, Image Series
The Circle, Image Series
Background Noise, Video
The Procession, Video
Exhibtion View
METRO/POLIS, Magazine, published by VFMK
Essay by Marcus Steinweg
About