Intervention d’Aspern – per Aspern ad Astra! Ein paneuropäisches Après im Bedenken des 200-Jahr-Jubiläums der Schlachten von Aspern, Essling und Wagram, 1809 (A Paneuropean Après in Memory of the Bicentennial of the Battles of Aspern, Essling, and Wagram, 1809) made the historically charged area around the Asperner Heldenplatz in Vienna’s twenty-second district a focus of art in the public realm.
Shown in alternation, the Obelisk d’Aspern projection by Brendan Kronheim, a discursive slide show, and the short film Aspern (by Martina Höfler and Kronheim) raised the question of how to deal with war monuments steeped in national myth. The goal was to establish visual axes as historical cross-references: Anton Fernkorn’s monumental sculpture of the “Lion of Aspern,” the obelisk at the binational Aspern cemetery, and a more recent relief of the battle of Aspern (W. H. Kozian, 1988–1990) at the corner of Erzherzog-Karl-Straße and Siegesplatz all added to a critical re-contextualization, or mental interrogation, of the historical events.
The artist also held two handicrafts workshops for third and fourth grade pupils of the Aspern elementary school focusing on the subjects of the “Obelisk” and “Napoleon at Aspern.”