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Across from the Palais des Beaux Arts building, on the opposite side of Löwengasse is Rudolf-von-Alt-Platz. Built between 1906 and 1911, the public square was given the name of the Austrian painter Rudolf von Alt, who died just one year before its construction started. The pseudo-public square is occupied by a lawn of patchy grass, a humble group of trees, an oval planter of roses, and is bookended by a row of trash bins. Passers-by are invited to use only a small amount of the square’s space, delineated by a line of concrete that separates the grass lawn in two. The majority of the green space is surrounded by an ankle-high iron fence, making it unclear if the lawn is merely optical or an invitation to lounge.

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Animated by the last presentation of commissioned works at this very same site, artist Guilherme Maggessi will create a picnic blanket for the space as a site-specific installation that invites the viewers into a performative social score. As social infrastructure, the picnic is as much a form of hosting as it is a strategy of exclusion – both of humans (invited guests) and non-humans (the ground plane, bugs, etc.). But as with many social infrastructures it also dwells in ambiguity. Engaging with the ambiguity between social infrastructures and culture-nature relations that are expressed in the design of Rudolf-von-Alt Platz, the picnic blanket will be activated through a series of impromptu fittings, sculptural try-outs, and social gatherings.

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The social scores that emerge from the construction and performance of “A Picnic Blank for Rudolf-von-Alt Platz” will then be translated into a series of dead-end assembling instructions, which, very much akin to an IKEA assembling manual, confront the user with their own cultural, social, and physical limitations.

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Everyone is invited to the picnic.

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*Guilherme Maggessi (b.1994, BR) is an artist, researcher, and designer, whose practice is concerned with the historical and material production, circulation and reception of images.