Wanderlust Warenhaus
For Steirischer Herbst 2025 I created an immersive experience in Graz’s largest fashion store Kastner und Öhler, inviting the audience to embark on an excursion and contemplate the paradoxes of modern consumerism and its appropriation of nature. Drawing upon the store’s design elements, I transformed it into a fictitious mountain landscape. Visitors navigated the mazelike structure surrounded by a soundscape of natural sounds recorded in and around Graz. In this artificial wilderness, birdsong accompanied browsing for shoes, a babbling brook echoed through the perfume department, while reaching the top floor became a hike to a summit.
After the store had closed, a group of performers spread all over it and inhabits the wilderness, enacting scenes reminiscent of everyday hikes and playfully engaging with the actual space as well as with the fictitious landscape. Along this parcours, the boundaries between reality and illusion, nature and commerce were blurred, while the performance challenged the romanticized nostalgia for nature and its role in national identity–building.
2024, Wanderlust Warenhaus, performance © Lynn Van Oijstaeijen and Johanna Lamprecht
Credits
Concept, direction: Thomas Verstraeten
Sound design: Senjan Jansen
Artistic assistance: Renée Faveere
Costume and prop assistance: Fiona Gamper
With: Paul Connert, Sebastian Egger, Bernadette Felber, Lukas Ganster, Thomas Gössler, Lia Helena Grabmüller, Alma Haas, Anna Paola Hauer, Ingo Hauer, Jan Friedolin Hauer, Konstantin Emanuel Hauer, Marie Luz Hauer, Nicole Heigenhauser, Bernadette Hirschmugl, Luzia Johow, Nora Köhler, Jakob Kolb, Josef Koller, Markus Perner, Peter Pikl, Michaela Purgstaller, Sandra Schitter, Marlene Schwar, Eva Schweighofer, Anna Schweighofer, Irmgard Schweighofer, Hermann Schweighofer, Beatrix Somweber-Rah, Florian Strasser, Trio Zwoadreivier (Eva Maria Hois, Rosmarie Krainz, Elisabeth Glavic), Stephan Trippl, Aurelia Volkmann
Commissioned and produced by steirischer herbst ’24
In cooperation with Kastner & Öhler
With the kind support of the Government of Flanders