The Viennese amusement park "Prater" and its complex historical development since 1895 introduces concepts of visibility, ambiguity and legibility between real places and fictional architectures. The park was part of the radical re-structuring and Aryanization in Austria, 1938. Most of the traces have disappeared today or remain silent about their history of injustice and violence.  

Like in many amusement parks, most of the themed attractions are simplified reproductions, only showing the front view of the original building. The 3D-model is a de– and reconstructing of the historic entrance facade functioning as a representative and illusory structure, as a separator of outside and inside, of what is visible and hidden. With re-arranging and scaling the “original” architecture (and interfering with video mappings), the work is commenting on visual methods of manipulating (and determining) legibility.

Virtual archives, by simultaneously "being in space", re-animate hybrid impressions of space, time, memory and knowledge. The potential to make archives spatially perceptible as scripts for storytelling - documentary or fictional - enables experiencing and actualizing history as story.

The work is the result of a long-term research project in the archive of the Austrian National Libraries.


[see digital work]

[ONB data sets]