Fiction / Friction: Collective Care in Messy Times
with Eleni Boutsika Palles & Matilde Igual Capdevila
#carefutures #fiction #scenography
REST YOUR LUNGS, REST YOUR MIND
The sanatoriums are gone—along with their promises of stillness. Modernity came, modernity left, anxiety, fine dust and the tyranny of self-optimization is here to stay. How do we recover when the world doesn't slow down?
This workshop finds inspiration in the very space that hosts it: the former Otto Wagner Spital in Vienna. Once a site of rest, control, and institutional care, its history lingers in the architecture, in the grass, in the air. We draw inspiration from its layered past—of sanatoriums, psychiatry, and social reform—as we imagine new futures of rest that resist commodification and isolation.
FICTION / FRICTION
During the workshop we will explore the friction between private and public space, between individual care and collective well-being. Through literature, theory, and walks through the grounds of Steinhof, we’ll investigate how fiction can create openings for resistance. We’ll touch grass and question norms, critiquing the neoliberal framing of “self-care” in favor of something messier—and more mutual.
STICKY MESS
Together we’ll get our hands dirty. Using collage, craft, and exploratory scale-model making, we’ll imagine alternative scenographies of rest and recovery—ones that defy control and embrace complexity. We will develop characters, timelines, and geographies as drivers for design and will compose story-rich environments that unfold through interaction and sequence. These models won’t be perfect. They’ll be layered, sticky, contradictory—just like us. The outcome of the workshop will be presented as an installation showcasing our collective explorations.
Eleni Boutsika Palles is an architect and scenographer. In addition to her practice, she explores the theory and design of multisensory, interactive, and narrative environments. She studied architecture at the Technical University of Athens, scenography at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, and Art & Science at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. From 2019 to 2024, she was a doctoral candidate and university assistant at the Institute of Architectural Theory at the University of Innsbruck. Since 2019, she has also been a member of the editorial team of ADATO, an architecture magazine based in Luxembourg. She is a co-founder of the Vienna Architecture Summer School.
www.elenipalles.com
Matilde Igual Capdevila’s work combines walking, collecting and building installations. Her practice deals with urban realities and the everyday life. Her current research focuses on the unfinished urban landscapes as a concrete manifestation of economic, climatic and social crisis. She graduated in Architecture from the ETSA València and holds a MA in Fine Arts from die Angewandte. She obtained her PhD in 2024 under Prof. Elke Krasny at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. In 2018 she co-founded the Institute for Linear Research, a collaborative platform for investigating contemporary landscapes by walking along arbitrary lines.
www.matildeigual.eu
www.instituteforlinearresearch.org
︎︎︎
MEDIA:
reading, walking, crafting
︎︎︎LOCATION: main location
︎︎︎TEACHING LANGUAGE: english
︎︎︎WHAT TO BRING: device with internet access, paper and pencil
︎︎︎REQUIREMENTS: no specific requirements
︎︎︎MAXIMUM NUMBER OF PARTICIPANTS: 5
︎︎︎LOCATION: main location
︎︎︎TEACHING LANGUAGE: english
︎︎︎WHAT TO BRING: device with internet access, paper and pencil
︎︎︎REQUIREMENTS: no specific requirements
︎︎︎MAXIMUM NUMBER OF PARTICIPANTS: 5