DO ARCHITECTS DANCE?
SITUATIONAL AND PERFORMATIVE INTERVENTION
Tuesday, 26 May 2026, 12:00-13:00.
Duration: 40 min.
Artists: Kollektiv KLAUS (AT/INTL). Sound: Julian Siffert (AT).
Karlsplatz, Vienna.
Kollektiv KLAUS investigate the interface of built and lived environment on Vienna’s emblematic Karlsplatz.
Engaging in a dialogue with the architecture of Karlskirche, the Vienna Museum’s new building, and the classical, modern, and postmodern university buildings of TU Wien, architectural space is perceived as an active partner of formal reflection rather than merely a backdrop. The dancers of Kollektiv KLAUS use their bodies as sensory organs – as instruments of measurement and scale – to bring the geometries of urban planning into human reach.
Kollektiv KLAUS
The KLAUS collective consists of female artists from different cultural backgrounds, generations, and disciplines. This diversity is an integral part of their creative practice and is reflected in their performances. Founded in Vienna in 2014, the collective has continuously explored the impact of dance on public space. All KLAUS performances are created site-specifically from a female perspective, drawing attention to the normatizing forces of city planning, while also highlighting the potential for non-standardized behaviour within the civic realm. KLAUS programmatically addresses a wide range of topics, from social inequality across current discourses, to questions of “Who has access to art?” and “How does this differ across milieus?” Their activities support the visibility, equality, and self-empowerment of all individuals.
This situational and performative intervention for DO ARCHITECTS DANCE? returns to the collective’s series KANON – eine weibliche Aufstellung, which echoes the pioneering Austrian avant-garde artist Valie Export’s Körperkonfigurationen. Between 1972 and 1982, Export serially staged her body in urban environments as a critical agent within the spatial and symbolic order of architecture.
In this sense, the agora becomes a stage for Kollektiv KLAUS to physically engage architecture’s spatial potential as an ethnic domain, and the body within its presented duration of time. Karlsplatz is a site where various levels of social action intertwine and historically overlap. This intervention makes visible how the built environment shapes bodies, but also how physical movement itself can reshape our perception of architecture. Overall, as a performative gesture in the public sphere, it confronts the passer-by with a sense of artistic import.
The performance of Kollektiv KLAUS is embedded in a soundscape by Julian Siffert, projected from a mobile PA.
Curator: Lona Gaikis (DE/CAN).
Funded by the Federal Ministry for Housing, Arts, Culture, Media and Sport (BMWKMS) and the City Council of Vienna Stadt Wien MA7 Kultur.
