CONSERVATION AGE, 2019

The project works with the idea that humanity has reached a certain ultimate point from which it is urgently necessary to protect or preserve certain places, things, environments, buildings, alternative cultural heritage or natural resources or we may lose them forever. The whole project started in Salzburg, but it was quite challenging to find enough places that need to be protected and preserved, because in Austria they are quite good at preservation. So the preserves featured one (of the two) brutalist buildings in Salzburg (which are also in danger of being demolished), the Salzach River with its glacier water, actual homes in the tourist-exposed historic centre, the bank’s sensitive graphic design, mountains and forests, a wild garden in the centre of the city offering plenty of water and plants for birds and insects, and then the Summer Academy of Fine Arts itself as one of the few venues for live contemporary art in the Baroque birthplace of Amadeus Mozart. I then created a new edition of cans dedicated to the city of Ústí nad Labem, which was unfortunately much simpler. Ústí has been struggling with the gradual disappearance of valuable legacies of various kinds for a long time. Thus, the preserves may even depict already demolished, closed places, of which only (one) preserve remains.