A Stone from Metternich's House in Bohemia
1996
Video, 00:00:30.
Materials: PAL
Collection: Courtesy of Galerie Wien Lukatsch, Berlin.
"I went to an old monastery in Plasy, Bohemia (Czech Republic) to establish a pole for the center of the world. Metternich, the German who had become foreign minister of Austria in 1809, had bought the monastery and made it into one of his summer house. Metternich once said that asia begins at the Landgasse in Vienna.
I brought a stone from the monastery to Vienna, to Ludwig Wittgenstein’s house. Metternich wanted Austria to save Europe (from the free-thinking French revolution) so he had to put a lot of people in stone dungeons below the beautiful buildings. Their screams added nothing to the sounds of the violins above." [full text here]