Wiener Festwochen, into the city, 2019
Austria and Mexico have a special history. In 1910, in the first year of the Mexican Revolution, a cooperative workers’ settlement in the Lower Austrian steel town of Ternitz gave itself the name “Mexico”. Was this an act of solidarity with Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa, the heroes of the revolution? A projection by the workers onto a faraway land in South America that a true revolution would soon take place here, too, with them, from below, redistributing land and property?
Later, one of the workers’ sons of “Mexico” found himself ordered as a soldier of the guard to balls in the Palais Palffy on Josefsplatz – waltz dancing in the arms of young Mexican women from wealthy families. (The governesses at the edge strictly observing the observance of decency.) While not suspecting that he fulfilled the cliché which the Mexican Higher Society had cultivated since the short years of the unfortunate Emperor “Maximilian of Austria”. It may not be surprising that he himself later traveled on his honeymoon to Acapulco and the Pyramids.
Karl Spiehs, the legendary producer of the “Wörthersee Films”, also grew up in Ternitz and justified his wild career with “The Last Ride to Santa Cruz” – a “Spaghetti Western” with the young Klaus Kinski, for whom Gran Canaria had to serve as the South American revolutionary country.
Lukas Matthaei & Mariel Rodriguez take these and other miraculous projections as an opportunity to set up their BAILE BASSENA for the Wiener Arbeitergasse – a serenata, a homage to the multifaceted street in the middle of the Viennese neighbourhood of Margareten.
