A sound installation based on text and sound bites of German artist Martin Kippenberger (1953–1997), who spent extended phases of his life in Vienna and Graz, was developed for Vienna’s Danube Canal by Oliver Augst together with Rüdiger Carl and Sven-Åke Johansson. Carl and Johansson were art companions and friends of Kippenberger, and the three of them also worked together in action art and performances. The 1989 publication Jazz zum Fixen (Jazz to Shoot Up) by the Calma Trio, consisting of Carl, Kippenberger, and Albert Oehlen, is a historical document of this collaboration, which the artists also drew on for their sound installation.

“Cheesecake from the food mart / brings many a foul mood fart” or “Think today / Be done tomorrow” are examples of the absurd poetry that Kippenberger has come to be known for. Language is a constant in his oeuvre. Using long-drawn-out speeches, corny puns, rhymes, quotes, insane image title inventions and slogans borrowed from all sorts of sources, the artist forced his way into his audience’s visual and auditory channels. Added to the poems, which were set to new music, were original sound bites by Kippenberger. The sound installation was informed by its live-like randomized character: a playback mode with a 99 factorial (1 × 2 × 3 × 4 × ... × 99) variability, which allowed for ever-new sequences of speech and sound, was punctuated by spells of silence of different lengths.

Already since 2008, Augst, Carl, and Johansson have been working together, relating to texts by Kippenberger—quite in line with the artist himself who loved to engage, and re-collage, works by fellow artists. The highly successful radio play Kippenberger Hören (Listening to Kippenberger) was followed by live performances entitled Aufstehn (Getting up)/Stuhl kaputt machen (Chair Breaking) /you/yellow/you, also shown in a MAK Nite event in 2009. The installation on Danube Canal further developed the original concept and at the same time signaled Kippenberger’s return to the public space of Vienna.

The Danube Canal seemed a logical choice as the site of a sound installation. The subway which becomes both visible and audible here was a motif and a model of thought for Kippenberger: he wanted to enmesh the world in a virtual subway network which he called “Metro Net WORLD CONNECTION” and had subway stairwells leading nowhere built in remote places; in 1991, he installed his multipart work Tiefes Kehlchen (Deep Throat) in the Neubaugasse subway station, and in 2003 he was represented posthumously with a subway vent shaft at the 50th Venice Biennale. The styles and tags of the graffiti artists as well as the bustling street life of the area, a popular hangout in the summer months, are quite in keeping with Kippenberger’s wish to stay in permanent social contact with his environment, which also informed much of his multimedia work engaging “everyone and everything.”