Artists in Residence
We spent November 2017 living in the Museumsquartier in Vienna, Austria as Q21 Artists-in-Residence. We were invited by the artist collective, monochrom.
Monochrom - Wikipedia
Monochrom (stylised as monochrom) is an international art-technology-philosophy group, publishing house and film production company. It was founded in 1993, and defines itself as "an unpeculiar mixture of proto-aesthetic fringe work, pop attitude, subcultural science and political activism". Its main office is located at Museumsquartier/ Vienna (at 'Q21').
We had an insanely inspiring and rejuvenating time meeting and learning about the work of international artists, exploring Vienna (including its many museums!), participating in Vienna Art Week, building a cocktail robot for Roboexotica (our primary project while there), hosting a seminar and creating a film in three hours with the Nerd Institute, and of course, filming as much as possible! Some of our footage will end up in a future web-series, and we also happily shot a few scenes for Johannes Grenzfurthner's new film, Glossary of Broken Dreams. We had the pleasure of meeting many visiting and local artists, got to play a great custom-to-the-environment role-playing adventure helmed by Chris Sims!
Stay tuned! We have many videos to edit examining all of those parts of our trip and talking about the various events and endeavors we participated in! Vienna was a very fun place where magical pop-up Christmas markets and punsch (mulled wine) huts appear in the blink of an eye! Lisa even came to visit us from Switzerland!
It is important for Americans to know that if they ever go to Austria, the toilets have a special shelf that we dubbed a "poop shelf." Other travelers have written extensively (also here and here) about this phenomenon and its many pros and cons, but for now, we'll just show it to you sans poop.
Glossary of Broken Dreams
We were invited to Austria by Johannes Grenzfurthner whom we met while both of our previous films were on the film fest circuit. We have similar work-ethic sensibilities (which is to get out there and MAKE THE STUFF) and became fast friends. As soon as we landed, he wasted no time putting us to work, shooting some scenes for his upcoming film, Glossary of Broken Dreams (IMDb, Facebook).
Plot Outline: Puppets! Pixels! Anime! Live action! Stock footage! Lumpennerd Johannes Grenzfurthner gives an ideotaining cinematic revue about important political concepts. Everyone is talking about freedom! Privacy! Identity! Resistance! The Market! The Left! But, yikes, Johannes can't tolerate ignorant and topically abusive comments on the "Internet" anymore! Supported by writer Ishan Raval, in this film, Johannes explains, re-evaluates, and sometimes sacrifices political golden calves of discourse.
We had already done some audio recording in LA for the film with Amber Benson (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) before going to Austria.
We helped work on several more scenes in Austria, shooting with a variety of great people and props including capitalist puppets (literal puppets), Max Grodénchik (Star Trek: Deep Space 9), and most importantly, Johannes' mother! All of the shoots were a blast and we couldn't be more excited to see the finished film!
behind-the-scenes photos from Glossary of Broken Dreams
Prater!
One of our favorite places to visit in Vienna was the Prater, a huge public park full of independently operated amusement park rides and booths.
It's strange, fun, kitsch and even houses the micronation, the Republic of Kugelmugel!
Prater
More photos!
[…] 2017 was our first full year living in Los Angeles! Certainly a weird year in the world and that weirdness certainly seeped into our lives, but that did not stop us from having a productive year! One of the most exciting things we've ever done was to go to Vienna, Austria for the entire month of November as Artists-in-Residence – read all about that adventure here! […]