The project "Signal from Dachstein" can be experienced from June 1st to November 3rd, 2024, through an audiovisual installation in the Marble Hall of Schloss Trautenfels. The special exhibition provides an overview of the diverse artistic engagement with the Dachstein region, always in direct exchange with science on topics such as meteorology, biodiversity, geology, glaciology, forests and pastures, as well as tourism and infrastructure. The works of the five regional artists will be presented in the exhibition, alongside the landscape opera from 2021, which Strijbos & Van Rijswik have specially rearranged for the Marble Hall. Together with video and sound recordings of the glacier, the installation offers an immersive experience.

Stay tuned for details on the exhibition and its opening, which will be available here soon.

In conjunction with the themes of the exhibition, from June to November 2024, there will be events held at various locations throughout the entire region. These events will delve deeper into the exhibition's themes from both artistic and scientific perspectives. Each event will feature musical and artistic performances followed by panel discussions, involving not only the artists but also experts from fields such as science, research, tourism, and more. Details about the events will be available here soon.

Through the interdisciplinary collaboration of artists, experts, scientists, and stakeholders from tourism and regional development, "Signal from Dachstein" emerged as a cultural project that engages with the current living environment and cultural identity of people in the Dachstein region. In 2024, continuous exchange with cultural institutions and departments of municipalities, as well as collaboration with local artists, remain essential pillars of the project.

The artists involved in the landscape opera Signal from Dachstein 2021 have close ties to the region surrounding the Dachstein. The five artists share a particularly sensitive artistic approach to exploring the relationship between humans and nature and bringing the region's own questions to the forefront of perception. Supported by La Strada as "site-related artists," they are accompanied in the further development of their artistic work. The examination of current societal developments, cultural history, and the impacts of climate change in the Dachstein region are central themes.

On an international level, Signal from Dachstein marks the beginning of a series of projects that explore the theme of humans and nature in the context of climate change through artistic means. Long-term collaborations, as sought in the region surrounding the Dachstein, are also a focus of the network IN SITU, co-founded by La Strada and supported by the European Union. As part of the project phase "(UN)COMMON SPACES," artists will address questions of social change and transformation processes across Europe also this year. 

For many years, La Strada has focused on community art projects that bring together international networks with regional initiatives to expand horizons and shift perspectives together. After all, creativity belongs not only on stage or in lecture halls but also in everyday life.

 

... born in Schladming, she lives and works in Vienna as a film and media artist. Nevertheless, her native region has never let go of her thematically. She is involved in the wide-ranging field of experimental, independent handmade film. Her works are performed in the cinema as well as in exhibition contexts or performatively. In the context of Signal vom Dachstein, her work is concentrated around the Super8-camera. In a documentary, essayistic and experimental style, she deals with topics of the region such as snow farming, alpine herbs, the work of artists and writers active in the region. The special quality of the Super8-camera is that its technical characteristics always determine the formal framework of the works. Thus, there is a film cassette available for each topic - a series of films about the region is created, which can stand on their own as well as together showing a comprehensive picture of the region around the Dachstein.

... was born in Graz and grew up in Upper Styria. From the dream of being a world champion and Olympic medalist in Nordic combination, he found his way to the arts. He studied first in Graz, later in Berlin, only to come back to Graz and finally to the Enns Valley. His artistic practice includes transdisciplinary work in different constellations and contexts. Currently, the focus is on the examination of endurance sports as both a practical and discursive framework for thinking about action in terms of empowerment, sustainability, softness, body awareness and landscape. In the context of Signal vom Dachstein, his focus is primarily on an examination of the concepts and realities of living and housing in the Enns Valley, or in other words: to whom do these landscapes and the supposedly good life in the countryside belong and apply? How can life be shaped and how can one afford it at all in a region between hyper-tourism, tradition, second homes and the attempt at sustainability?

. grew up in Ramsau am Dachstein, but is also at home in France, Great Britain and recently in Switzerland. She creates new sound worlds by exploring and manipulating her acoustic environment. She loves to capture the sounds of unusual environments. Among these unusual sound worlds is the Dachstein with its glacier, crevasses, caves and glacial streams. The awareness that we are probably the last generation to experience this glacier land- and soundscape in this form has inspired the idea of an acoustic glacier archive. Working closely at the interface of science and ecology, Katharina Pfennich explores the melting of glaciers and the changes in our natural sound space. From the collected recordings - from the surface of the glacier, from its crevasses and caves, but also from the interior of the mountain itself - she in turn composes new soundscapes that can be experienced as acoustic installations.

is a photographer, but also an amateur musician, a certified social worker and a trained letterpress printer. He lives in St. Martin/Grimming, over the summer on the Königreichalm on the Dachstein plateau. This environment, the region around the Dachstein, is his home, with which he is concerned in his artistic work - which concerns him. As part of Signal vom Dachstein, he is getting to the bottom of "Why?" and "How?" until 2024. Why does his homeland still move him, although he has already spent his whole life in it? How does the romanticized "ideal" world around the Dachstein present itself, how and why could it tip over into disaster? How are "Steinmandln" (stone arrangements for marking routes), the Dachstein mountains, tourism, the relationship between people and nature connected with this?

… grew up in Styria as a musician's child next to the dance floor, where she spent countless nights sleeping and absorbing Alpine folk music. As one of the pioneers of "new folk music", she frequently combines traditional Alpine music with jazz and other, international musical dialects. Until 2024, she will create a musical link between the musical dialects, localities and valleys of the Dachstein region as part of the project - inspired by hikes around the Dachstein and her family relationship with the region. Her compositions set individual stages of these hikes to music; musicians who themselves have a close connection to the region will make these compositions sound together with Marie-Theres. And thus also make the Dachstein sound again.