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EbenSee

The centre of Ebensee is separated from the shore of the lake Traunsee by a busy main road and the railway. Access is only possible via the road or underpass and is quite strenuous and unappealing. The work arose out of this highly unattractive spatial situation. In a two weeks performance, 300 numbered, bright blue buckets are filled with lake water and carried to various points of the site and left there. The participation of residents in carrying water is explicitly desired. At the end of the festival, the locals are free to take a bucket of Traunsee water home with them.

Throughout the festival, the number of buckets in public space increases - they soon shape the entire townscape. The artists are present, can be recognized quickly through their activity and are hence easy to get in touch with. As a result, the residents are reminiscing about swimming in this place, about flooded cellars, and about water shortages in their current place of residence, Los Angeles. They tell us about the former guesthouse on the lake shore, speculations about this plot of land, which has since been abandoned, about the tourist potential and about not wanting to become Hallstatt. There is discussion about the federal highway that creates mobility, whether it could have been realized in another way, how it would have been better to overcome this barrier, and about the fact that one can swim in Rindbach anyway.

Ebensee Valley - Festival Fiktion von dorftv                               

The buckets become a sought-after object. The spreading of the water becomes a collaborative effort which underlines the importance of the lake for Ebensee. Thus, buckets with selected numbers find their way in teamwork to Ebensee's front gardens, to the backyard mountain, on the daily way home further and further away from the town centre, into the next bush, on traffic signs or to the playground. At the end of the festival, artists and buckets disappeared from public space. The urban planning situation remains, the buckets can be found as a relic in the Ebensee households.