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Kollektiv
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    Serving Garden

    “The garden always emerges from a combined act of humans and nature,… their art unfolds in the treatment of boundaries.” — Gilles Clément, Gardens, Landscape and the Genius of Nature

    Serving Garden is a mirrored stainless steel table at REAKTOR in Vienna, placed on the threshold between the art space’s garden and the adjacent wasteland. It invites connection rather than separation: a site of encounter, negotiation, and dialogue. Its mirror-polished surface reflects the sky, the surroundings, and the viewers themselves.

    The table acts as a performative threshold. Unfolded toward the wasteland, it symbolically extends beyond the fence and joins two distinct zones, a silent invitation to cross, to meet, to imagine together. If the invitation is declined, the movable half remains upright and becomes a vertical mirror that reflects and expands the space. The work oscillates between gesture and image, between presence and absence.

    Once a Heuriger, a traditional Viennese wine tavern, known as Etablissement Gschwandner, REAKTOR has long been a place of gathering, celebration, and shared experience, and continues this legacy today through experimentation and dialogue. Serving Garden extends this spirit beyond the cultivated garden, across the fence, into the adjacent terrain. The wasteland is not empty but a latent field for new forms of community. The fence becomes a hinge between the cultivated and the wild, between what is and what could be. In a present marked by fragmentation, Serving Garden offers a quiet image of togetherness.

    Through a series of events, the work invites visitors and neighbours to gather, reflect, and shape a shared future. An inauguration marked the table’s first unfolding, not merely as a performance but as a collective celebration of open space.

    The table consists of prefabricated stainless steel elements that can be disassembled individually. It measures 8.15 × 0.9 × 0.9 m.

    Project Info

    Status
    completed

    Year
    2025

    Location
    Vienna, AT
    TYPE
    open call

    category
    installation

    client
    REAKTOR WIEN

    Team
    Marcella-Malin Brunner, Natascha Peinsipp, Maura Schmitt, Felix Steinhoff

    Performance
    Ox Malo, Aron Hollinger & Bibi Bauer

    Execution
    Wolfgang Ure

    Fotos
    asphalt / Kollektiv für Architektur, Lissa Weiser

    Performers at the table, the movable half raised upright as a vertical mirror behind them asphalt kollektiv
    Audience gathered in front of the REAKTOR building, watching guitarist and typist at the long steel table asphalt kollektiv
    Gloved hands fitting a stainless steel cylinder leg onto its base in the lawn asphalt kollektiv
    Mirror-polished tabletop stretching across the lawn towards the REAKTOR building asphalt kollektiv
    Axonometric sketch: the table crossing the fence line between garden and wasteland asphalt kollektiv
    Steel table on cylinder legs at the garden edge, its movable half standing upright against the trees asphalt kollektiv
    Raised mirror half leaning over the old brick wall at the fence, reflecting the foliage asphalt kollektiv
    Back of the raised table half: steel frame with hinge and support strut above rubble stones asphalt kollektiv
    Folded-up half above the brick wall, the fixed tabletop continuing on its steel leg asphalt kollektiv
    Axonometric site plan: REAKTOR building, garden and adjacent wasteland, the table on the boundary asphalt kollektiv
    View from a REAKTOR window onto the table and the raised mirror in the garden asphalt kollektiv
    Hands arranging a working model with mirrored table and cut-out trees asphalt kollektiv
    asphalt kollektiv
    asphalt kollektiv

    Serving Garden

    “The garden always emerges from a combined act of humans and nature,… their art unfolds in the treatment of boundaries.” — Gilles Clément, Gardens, Landscape and the Genius of Nature

    Serving Garden is a mirrored stainless steel table at REAKTOR in Vienna, placed on the threshold between the art space’s garden and the adjacent wasteland. It invites connection rather than separation: a site of encounter, negotiation, and dialogue. Its mirror-polished surface reflects the sky, the surroundings, and the viewers themselves.

    The table acts as a performative threshold. Unfolded toward the wasteland, it symbolically extends beyond the fence and joins two distinct zones, a silent invitation to cross, to meet, to imagine together. If the invitation is declined, the movable half remains upright and becomes a vertical mirror that reflects and expands the space. The work oscillates between gesture and image, between presence and absence.

    Once a Heuriger, a traditional Viennese wine tavern, known as Etablissement Gschwandner, REAKTOR has long been a place of gathering, celebration, and shared experience, and continues this legacy today through experimentation and dialogue. Serving Garden extends this spirit beyond the cultivated garden, across the fence, into the adjacent terrain. The wasteland is not empty but a latent field for new forms of community. The fence becomes a hinge between the cultivated and the wild, between what is and what could be. In a present marked by fragmentation, Serving Garden offers a quiet image of togetherness.

    Through a series of events, the work invites visitors and neighbours to gather, reflect, and shape a shared future. An inauguration marked the table’s first unfolding, not merely as a performance but as a collective celebration of open space.

    The table consists of prefabricated stainless steel elements that can be disassembled individually. It measures 8.15 × 0.9 × 0.9 m.

    Project Info

    Status
    completed

    Year
    2025

    Location
    Vienna, AT
    TYPE
    open call

    category
    installation

    client
    REAKTOR WIEN

    Team
    Marcella-Malin Brunner, Natascha Peinsipp, Maura Schmitt, Felix Steinhoff

    Performance
    Ox Malo, Aron Hollinger & Bibi Bauer

    Execution
    Wolfgang Ure

    Fotos
    asphalt / Kollektiv für Architektur, Lissa Weiser

    Performers at the table, the movable half raised upright as a vertical mirror behind them asphalt kollektiv
    Audience gathered in front of the REAKTOR building, watching guitarist and typist at the long steel table asphalt kollektiv
    Gloved hands fitting a stainless steel cylinder leg onto its base in the lawn asphalt kollektiv
    Mirror-polished tabletop stretching across the lawn towards the REAKTOR building asphalt kollektiv
    Axonometric sketch: the table crossing the fence line between garden and wasteland asphalt kollektiv
    Steel table on cylinder legs at the garden edge, its movable half standing upright against the trees asphalt kollektiv
    Raised mirror half leaning over the old brick wall at the fence, reflecting the foliage asphalt kollektiv
    Back of the raised table half: steel frame with hinge and support strut above rubble stones asphalt kollektiv
    Folded-up half above the brick wall, the fixed tabletop continuing on its steel leg asphalt kollektiv
    Axonometric site plan: REAKTOR building, garden and adjacent wasteland, the table on the boundary asphalt kollektiv
    View from a REAKTOR window onto the table and the raised mirror in the garden asphalt kollektiv
    Hands arranging a working model with mirrored table and cut-out trees asphalt kollektiv