Slaven Tolj, 'From Ten to Zero', 2015

Soundinstallation, Atrium

Slaven Tolj’s audio work “From Ten to Zero”, which can be heard at irregular intervals in the Atrium of the Erste Campus, makes it seem as if the walls of the building are “speaking.” The loudspeakers installed by Tolj, hidden behind the Atrium’s walls, play various historical and contemporary recordings. These include audio documents of the former Südbahnhof train station featuring announcements of arriving and departing trains, as well as conversations and text fragments in the various languages of the guest workers, political refugees, and tourists who arrived here and were often experiencing the “West” and/or Vienna for the very first time. Also to be heard are musical documents from feature films and from countries of the former Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, as well as recordings made in the context of the recent migration of refugees and political demonstrations. In this way, Slaven Tolj interweaves the bank building and the history of the location in which the Erste Campus was built with our immediate present. He conjures up memories of the vanished Südbahnhof and the multiple roles that it played in the lives of its users and in the history of the Cold War, makes references to the countries of the former monarchy and the present-day Erste Group that the Südbahnhof helped access, and hints at how those bygone times and past events live on in our present, influencing our thoughts and actions.

Slaven Tolj, born in Dubrovnik in 1964, lives and works in Rijeka and Dubrovnik. His works relate to the Yugoslav Wars and the effects had by political and social transformation in post-communist societies. In this, Slaven Tolj situates his oeuvre on the narrow margin between the visible and the invisible—in a multitude of media ranging from performance to installation art, photography, videos, and ready-mades. His works have been seen at numerous international exhibitions and venues such as documenta X in Kassel, the Moderna Galerija in Ljubljana, the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, the Museum moderner Kunst in Vienna, and the "steirischer herbst festival" in Graz.

Text: Kathrin Rhomberg & Pierre Bal-Blanc