Art as Commons

Cooperation event between m20d and the Society and Sustainability – Contemporary Art and Cultural Production focus area of Wissenschaft & Kunst / Arts & Knowledges

 22.01.2026 (Thursday) 16:00-18:00
Archive and Allmende
participatory field research via walking

23.01.2026 (Friday) 17:00-18:30 – in Flachau and online
Public Space, Common Space: Community Cultural Outreach as an objective
lecture by Fanni Nánay

Both are moderated and curated by Kinga Szemessy.

24.01.2026 (Saturday) 12:30-21:30
Joint bus ride and guided tour with the community “Meet in Salzburg”
Seat reservation: https://minus20degreelandscapeforcontemporaryartarchitecture.as.me/schedule/9af0499d

24.01.2026 (Saturday) 17:00-18:30
Open discussion between Fanni Nánay, Kinga Szemessy, and the audience

minus20degree is intrinsic to Flachau. Its programs are woven into the natural and built landscape: the slopes and ski lifts, the river Enns and the many hütte, the vast echoing space under the highway… While some of these sites belong to everybody, others are private properties whose owners lend them to be used by the artists and the visiting audiences. minus20degree in 2026 raises the question ‘How can art itself become commons / an allmende – an open space created through exchange and participation?’
In the case of public space festivals, all necessary ingredients seem to be given for participation. Yet, as a former visiting curator of the 2022 and 2024 editions of m20d, as well as the co-founder and artistic director of PLACCC International Festival of Site-specific Art and Art in Public Space (IN SITU partner), Fanni Nánay has been observing how art projects attempt to address and involve the locals as audience. In Flachau, it includes residents, skiers, tourism industry stakeholders, and seasonal workers. With them in mind, Fanni Nánay raises the question of how artistic projects can turn passers-by into participants, and for her, participation is understood as a relational, situated process in which different knowledges, expectations and temporalities confront each other and become negotiated.
How can m20d not only use public space but participate in ongoing processes of commoning, where access, visibility and responsibility are the focal points of debate? What is the difference in the strategies when an artist relates to existing communities, or when the artists intend to build a temporary or long-lasting community out of the spontaneous audience? How can one treat the local audience not as a homogeneous target group, but acknowledge the plurality of publics in Flachau and the asymmetries between them? How can such a goal be communicated, and how can impositions or tokenistic approaches be avoided? Whose responsibility is it to care for the maintenance of the relationships? How to design formats in which the perspectives of the locals can transform the artistic proposal itself? Answers will be given through plentiful examples.
The lecture will be based on Fanni Nánay’s lived experiences at m20d, as well as on a survey that has been sent out to all the former artists of m20d. However, to integrate the voices of locals, we invite festival visitors to join Fanni Nánay and cultural researcher and transdisciplinary artist Kinga Szemessy (Wissenschaft & Kunst, Salzburg) for a participatory field research walk that addresses how m20d contributes to an informal living archive of Flachau, in which artworks, infrastructures, tourism practices and everyday routines intersect.
Could we look at the landscape as an archive? What memories does a place hold of the past art installations or performances? How do the locals at these sites react to being remembered by the artists eight or more years ago? Did m20d enter into the collective remembrance of Flachau? These will guide our investigation while traversing through the most used and the forgotten spots of the former m20d editions. The collective findings will be implemented in the lecture the next day.

On Saturday, in a joint trip with the international, bottom-up organised group “Meet in Salzburg”, initiated and facilitated by Tamar Loitzenbauer (Taka), we are going to take the m20d bus from Nonntal to Flachau, experience Helgard Haud’s (Rimini Protokoll) sound installation on the Achterjet gondola, the sweat lodge of AestheticAthletics+ and many more events on site.

Fanni NÁNAY was born in Budapest, studied Hungarian and Polish philology (MA/BA), and cultural anthropology (MA) at Janus Pannonius University in Pécs, as well as theatre studies at the Jagellonian University in Kraków (PhD). In her thesis, she focused on Polish companies and events working on the borderline of theatre and non-theatre (religion, politics, community).
Her interests in art practices beyond the traditional places and contexts led her to founding the PLACCC International Festival of Site-specific Art and Art in Public Space in 2008, together with Katalin Erdődi (current director of Trafó House of Contemporary Arts Budapest and former curator at steirischer herbst Graz, brut Wien, and GfZK Leipzig). Fanni also works as a freelance organiser and programmer for different Hungarian companies and festivals, and furthermore writes theatre reviews.

Kinga SZEMESSY is a Hungarian performance artist living in Linz, and working at W&K Salzburg with a focus on art practices in relation to community engagement. She was trained in theatre studies, contemporary dance, dance anthropology, and as a guest lecturer, she has taught at Fontys University, Central European University, Mozarteum University, University of Theatre and Film Arts Budapest, and Budapest Contemporary Dance Academy. Her transdisciplinary practice and doctoral research has been focusing on (Central Eastern European) art educational approaches and participatory choreographies that consciously address discomfort, the feeling of bodily change as a learning resource to confront everyday injustices and other adversities. She is also a co-founder of the SVUNG Research Group, and SZOME Association for Somatic Movement and Education.

https://www.m20d.eu/
https://placcc.hu/
https://www.instagram.com/meet_in_salzburg

The primary language of the events is English, but German translation is possible.
Registration is not mandatory, but welcome: kinga.szemessy@moz.ac.at