Missing Link - Connecting rituals
Bloodletting with Hermann Nitsch and Paul Renner
Following on from the formats Das große Fressen and Märchenstunde, this year sees Missing Link - Verbindende Rituale. The centerpiece is an exhibition in Magazin 4 entitled Aderlass, in which works by Hermann Nitsch enter into dialogue with works by Paul Renner. A total of around 30 artistic positions are brought together under one curatorial roof.
The Aderlass exhibition in Magazin4 is based on the concept of making works from the collection of the provincial capital of Bregenz visible. Last year, the focus was on a work by Maria Lassnig from the 1960s - this year it is a Schüttbild by Hermann Nitsch, also from the city's collection. In close cooperation with institutions such as the Nitsch Foundation, a free, experimental curatorial practice is being developed: in addition to paintings, films, photographs and artefacts are also being shown - thus creating an expanded context around the respective main work.
Kultursommer 2025 sees itself as both a platform and a laboratory for these processes - a place where rituals can not only be observed, but also negotiated, shaped and physically experienced through performance and participation.
The question is not only: What has been lost?But also: What new forms of connection are emerging?
Experience over 30 artistic positions and practices to see how diverse, powerful and conscious the approach to these questions can be. We would like to thank everyone involved for making this cultural summer possible.
Until October 19, Magazine 4
Tree soul - World soul
Marco Bruckner
7 wooden sculptures are located at 7 spiritual places in Bregenz: Nepomuk Chapel, St. Gallus, Kreuzkirche am Ölrain, Herz Jesu, Mariahilf, St. Kolumban, St. Gebhard
Marco Bruckner reduces his sculptures to the essentials with a chainsaw. They invite you to stand inside and let the artwork ask you questions ...
until October 15, 2025
Tree soul - world soul, Marco Bruckner, Nepomuk Chapel, St. Gallus © Marco Bruckner
Malgorzata Mirga - Tas
Tele Ćerhenia Jekh - Jag
Malgorzata Mirga-Tas' art is dedicated to the everyday life and living environments of the Rom*nja culture. At Kunsthaus Bregenz, she is showing textile paintings and sculptures created especially for Bregenz.
until September 28, 2025, Kunsthaus Bregenz
Michael Armitage, Maria Lassnig, Chelenge van Rampelberg
Artist Talk with Michael Armitage & Chelenge Van Rampelberg
In summer, works by the British-Kenyan painter Michael Armitage, the Austrian painter, graphic artist and filmmaker Maria Lassnig and the Kenyan artist Chelenge Van Rampelberg will come together in the KUB foyer.
until September 28, 2025, Kunsthaus Bregenz
First Ascent II (museum façade) and Habitable Zone (model of reality) in the atrium
Bildstein | Glatz (A/CH)
In their work, Adlassnig and Wittwer refer to the oldest figures in human history, to hybrid creatures between man and animal. They create objects with a timeless effect, cultic "tools" for accessing and dealing with the other. In doing so, they pursue the desire for a unio mystica, the co-creation with all living beings.'At a dizzying height, a floating portaledge, as used by extreme climbers for overnight stays on the rock face, captivates the gaze of passers-by. The internationally active artist duo Bildstein | Glatz (A/CH) thus refers to the human endeavor to penetrate ever more inaccessible areas. In the atrium, the duo, known for their large-scale projects, erect an "inhabitable" platform supported by wooden pillars around 16 meters high. A model of reality that symbolizes the fragile balance between nature and human activity.
until November 9, 2025, vorarlberg museum, Kornmarktplatz 1
First ascent II (museum façade), bivouac tent, © Florian Koller/Sarah Mistura
Hug & Dance at the Pipeline Bregenz
Bardhi-i Rafet Jonuzi-t
The idea of "HUG & DANCE" has always been there, hovering in the air like a ghost. When the Bregenz - Lochau pipeline was completed, the idea also came together with the cogwheels and all the readymade objects seen and found by chance, as if dreamt up on a beautiful summer night! There (at the pipeline) hundreds of thousands "DANCE" and "HUG" each other - day and night, yesterday and today, and tomorrow it will still be like this as long as mankind breathes air!
September 15, September 16, September 22, September 23, October 6, October 7, October 13, October 14, 2025, Elektra Bregenz, Brielgasse 27
Singing paintings. Andrea Cusumano
"Singing Paintings - A picture poem about Achilles, Penthesilea and other stories" is a spatial installation that fills the Martinsturm and is created by Andrea Cusumano in an 8-hour continuous performance in front of an audience. The action will be created together with the German artist Alina Trionow, who will mix music, text, drawing, painting and performance in four rooms of the tower.
until October 19, 2025, Martinsturm, Martinsgasse 2b
Nicole Weniger, Tutto Passa, 2024, Fine Art Print © Bildrecht, Vienna 2025
Sensuality lies somewhere in between
Nicole Weniger
In her photographic and installation works, Nicole Weniger explores the relationship between body, space and memory. In "Sensuality lies somewhere in between", she interweaves landscape, body and memory to create poetic settings about belonging and change. Dwellings, tents and sculptural traces mark places of disappearance and at the same time open up new forms of presence.
until October 4, 2025, Bildraum Bodensee, Seestraße 5
Content
Elias Hirschl
The employees of Smile Smile Inc. go about their paid work with a mixture of humor and indifference. They sit at desks in a sterile office and produce new content every day: clickbait articles, reaction videos, AI-generated slideshows - anything that generates clicks. They are guided by a manager who wants to keep them motivated using positive psychology methods. Between bullshit bingo, coaching slogans and feel-good initiatives, the boundaries between authenticity and staging, between meaning and emptiness become increasingly blurred. Elias Hirschl takes a satirical look at an all too near future and its broken social network. At the same time, he creates characters who want to be there for each other and can love each other - despite everything. Co-production with the Schauspielhaus Wien
September 18, 19, 20, 24, 25 and 26, 2025, Theater Kosmos
Content, Schauspielhaus Vienna © Ines Bacher
Forest
Miriam V. Lesch
A tree grew on A.'s balcony overnight. Not a small plant, a real tree. Annoying, because A. actually has other things to do. Unfortunately, the municipal nursery is not responsible for balconies and the forestry office doesn't have time. Gradually you realize: Everywhere in the city, no, all over Central Europe, fully grown trees are suddenly appearing, right in the middle of urban centers: Now tree roots, underground mycelial connections and micro-organisms are making their way through the substructure of the city; fiber optics and the like don't stand a chance against them. National monuments such as the Eiffel Tower are soon overgrown - the reconquest of Europe by the forest begins. Humans have to make way, so the only option is to radically adapt to nature or flee to the Global South, where it is too hot for the trees because: "You need far too much space for a single species."
Lesch's flair for absurd situations, in which Bambi, Caesar and the Roman chronicler Pliny naturally appear side by side, ensures that the play deals with very topical issues such as climate catastrophe, flight or living in the city with subtle humor. Linguistically, the author effortlessly weaves very poetic passages into the action, in which she lets the forest itself speak as trees, mushrooms and beetles.
October 16 to 18, 2025, Theater Kosmos
WAGEN.PROJECTS WGN
The whole of Bregenz comes together in public space. "wagen. Projects" discusses the city, squares, its architecture, its population, its history and its spaces with different actions at various locations. A transformative mobile object marks the action space and combines artistic positions with social impulses.
Maurachgasse 1, ground floor & public space of the city of Bregenz
Program and information at www.wgnprojects.org
