[On the Southern Edge]

The area around the former city borders to the south of Graz can be wild and romantic or rather run-down, depending on how you see it. It is home to brownfield sites, shabby blocks of rented flats, warehouses and what is known in Austrian German as “Gstettn” – unused open fields. Smack in the middle, the independent studio house “Schaumbad” with its more than forty members set-up camp on the 2,300 square metres of a former lemonade bottling plant – between waste disposal equipment, carcass disposal equipment and an idyllic streamscape with a green beach.
Some artists spent their childhood in this area and now focus on this once familiar, but now alien place. Others turn their hand to research, studying local animals, plants and the human species. But no matter whether it’s a hug or a scientific excursion – the exhibition focuses on an area that so far hasn’t even been given a name yet. There will also be Schaumbad branch offices, joint walking tours and expeditions. The aim is to examine the subjects of home and arrival, community and difference.