Hyperreality is an annual music festival taking place in an off-location in Vienna.
May 23-25 2024
Otto Wagner Areal – Vienna, AT
 Hyperreality is an annual music festival for electronic and experimental music taking place in an off-location in Vienna. For its 2024 edition, Hyperreality moves into the Otto-Wagner-Areal (OWA), a vacant historic hospital site situated in a park, repurposing its former industrial kitchen into two floors on May 23rd, 24th and 25th.Â
Hyperreality acknowledges the history of the Klinik Penzing as a psychiatric hospital located on the grounds of the OWA and the harrowing crimes that were committed inside its doors during the NS regime. As an initial attempt towards a historical revision, we have compiled a folder with documents and resources provided by the non-profit organization Gedenkdienst, the City of Vienna, ERINNERN:AT, and the DĂ–W. As stated by the City of Vienna, the Otto-Wagner-Areal will become a hub for science, culture, and education.Â
This year Hyperreality serves a line-up deeply rooted in a collective process of reflecting on the present, past and future of club culture: Since the origins of electronic music, many things have changed. Independent and underground music and labels are suppressed by centralized platforms, while social media makes autonomous cultural networks invisible. This prompts musicians and listeners to compete for minimal or no payment by contributing content to these platforms and caused a shift of club culture towards middle-class homogeneity. The legacy of the “independent” artist and scene has to be re-evaluated along this development. Therefore Hyperreality 2024 aims to re-introduce class into the conversation about diversity in club culture – a topic intertwined with fields such as sexuality, race, queerness, gender, ableism, and religion.Â
In his unfinished book Acid Communism, Mark Fisher describes the fall of Chile's socialist president in the 1970s as inspiration for his theory of Capitalist Realism. The thesis describes “the widespread sense that capitalism is the only viable political and economic system, but also that it is now impossible even to imagine a coherent alternative to it.” This grand narrative is proven wrong by small stories – one of them is buried in the roots of Techno music in queer, black and latin inner-city communities – many more are told in the work of this year’s artists who, with their artistic practice, reflect the way we think about this culture which is under high pressure from industry interests, social media and technology mechanisms. With a focus on care, community, friendship and multidisciplinarity, Hyperreality aims to support a possible alternative future for this culture.Â
Hyperreality believes sound to be fundamentally about congregation, a medium to gather like-minded people who strive for a more egalitarian society. Along the historical roots of House and Techno music and in opposition to the backwards directed social developments of our time (reflected by things like censorship or increasingly precarious working conditions for musicians post-covid)– Hyperreality intends to create an inclusive environment, by focusing on equality and care, and to deconstruct the popular form of a festival by regarding music as a transgressive art form that is able to embed sound, performance and architecture as equal parameters. Hyperreality is a festival that is community-driven and aims to create an alternative approach to music festivals as compared to those who operate in a hyper-capitalized manner. When everyone is independent within hyper-capitalist models, we don’t have any collective bargaining power left.
TEAM
Chris Attila Izsák (he/they)
David Bitschnau (he/him)
Eva Holzinger (she/her)
Esther Straganz (she/her)
Julia Bichler (she/her)
Katia Gavryliuk (she/her)
Katharina Blum (she/her)
Klimentina Li (she/her)
Laurenz Forsthuber (he/him)
Lisa Holzinger (she/they)
Markus Gebhardt (he/him)
Marlene Engel (she/her)
Marlene Kager (they/them)
Micòl Masliah (they/them)
Rey Joichl (he/they)
Samu Casata (he/him)
Therese Kaiser (she/her)
Thanks to:
Kerstin Pfeifer (she/her)
Natalie Brunner (she/her)
Otto Wagner Areal – Vienna, AT
 Hyperreality is an annual music festival for electronic and experimental music taking place in an off-location in Vienna. For its 2024 edition, Hyperreality moves into the Otto-Wagner-Areal (OWA), a vacant historic hospital site situated in a park, repurposing its former industrial kitchen into two floors on May 23rd, 24th and 25th.Â
Hyperreality acknowledges the history of the Klinik Penzing as a psychiatric hospital located on the grounds of the OWA and the harrowing crimes that were committed inside its doors during the NS regime. As an initial attempt towards a historical revision, we have compiled a folder with documents and resources provided by the non-profit organization Gedenkdienst, the City of Vienna, ERINNERN:AT, and the DĂ–W. As stated by the City of Vienna, the Otto-Wagner-Areal will become a hub for science, culture, and education.Â
This year Hyperreality serves a line-up deeply rooted in a collective process of reflecting on the present, past and future of club culture: Since the origins of electronic music, many things have changed. Independent and underground music and labels are suppressed by centralized platforms, while social media makes autonomous cultural networks invisible. This prompts musicians and listeners to compete for minimal or no payment by contributing content to these platforms and caused a shift of club culture towards middle-class homogeneity. The legacy of the “independent” artist and scene has to be re-evaluated along this development. Therefore Hyperreality 2024 aims to re-introduce class into the conversation about diversity in club culture – a topic intertwined with fields such as sexuality, race, queerness, gender, ableism, and religion.Â
In his unfinished book Acid Communism, Mark Fisher describes the fall of Chile's socialist president in the 1970s as inspiration for his theory of Capitalist Realism. The thesis describes “the widespread sense that capitalism is the only viable political and economic system, but also that it is now impossible even to imagine a coherent alternative to it.” This grand narrative is proven wrong by small stories – one of them is buried in the roots of Techno music in queer, black and latin inner-city communities – many more are told in the work of this year’s artists who, with their artistic practice, reflect the way we think about this culture which is under high pressure from industry interests, social media and technology mechanisms. With a focus on care, community, friendship and multidisciplinarity, Hyperreality aims to support a possible alternative future for this culture.Â
Hyperreality believes sound to be fundamentally about congregation, a medium to gather like-minded people who strive for a more egalitarian society. Along the historical roots of House and Techno music and in opposition to the backwards directed social developments of our time (reflected by things like censorship or increasingly precarious working conditions for musicians post-covid)– Hyperreality intends to create an inclusive environment, by focusing on equality and care, and to deconstruct the popular form of a festival by regarding music as a transgressive art form that is able to embed sound, performance and architecture as equal parameters. Hyperreality is a festival that is community-driven and aims to create an alternative approach to music festivals as compared to those who operate in a hyper-capitalized manner. When everyone is independent within hyper-capitalist models, we don’t have any collective bargaining power left.
TEAM
Chris Attila Izsák (he/they)
David Bitschnau (he/him)
Eva Holzinger (she/her)
Esther Straganz (she/her)
Julia Bichler (she/her)
Katia Gavryliuk (she/her)
Katharina Blum (she/her)
Klimentina Li (she/her)
Laurenz Forsthuber (he/him)
Lisa Holzinger (she/they)
Markus Gebhardt (he/him)
Marlene Engel (she/her)
Marlene Kager (they/them)
Micòl Masliah (they/them)
Rey Joichl (he/they)
Samu Casata (he/him)
Therese Kaiser (she/her)
Thanks to:
Kerstin Pfeifer (she/her)
Natalie Brunner (she/her)