Updated on September 16, 2026  | 3 DAY FESTIVAL

Dance · Sound · Visual Art

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PERFORMANCE FESTIVAL – (RE)SONANT MATTER

October 9–11, 2026 – A festival for performance, resonance, and encounter

 

ARTISTS:

Magdalena Forster, Bea von Schrader, Gina Schwarz, Die.Puntigam, LUTZZ&BOG., Veza Fernández, Lens Kühleitner, Oneka von Schrader, Nazanin Mehraein, Luigi Guerrieri, Daphne von Schrader, David Pridal, Mehrta Shirzadian, Elisabeth Harnik, Irena Z. Tomažin, Luca Malina, Aaron Beck 

 

(RE)SONANT MATTER brings together artistic practices that begin with attention: with listening to bodies, sounds, materials and spaces – and to what emerges between them.

Across three days, Kunsthaus Urhof20 becomes a space in which not everything is predetermined. Works may be carefully composed and prepared, yet something remains open – to the presence of other artists, the audience, the place and the particular moment in which a performance unfolds.

For us, resonance is less a theme but a way of working and encountering. It does not require sameness or harmony. It begins where different bodies, voices, materials and perspectives are able to affect one another while retaining their own presence.

The festival invites us to listen differently and to remain receptive to what cannot yet be known in advance. Performance becomes a space in which perception can shift – and in which an encounter may change what was there before.

At Kunsthaus Urhof20, the architecture, history and surrounding landscape are part of this process. The house is not only a place where art is presented, but a place that allows artistic processes to emerge.

A weekend of performance, encounter and resonance.

Artistic Direction
Bea von Schrader · Oneka von Schrader

 

 

Programme

Friday, October 9^th, 2026

• 19:00 Doors open
• 19:30
  MAGDALENA FORSTER
  ECHO BODY – Urhof20 Version
• 21:00
  BEA VON SCHRADER · GINA SCHWARZ · DIE.PUNTIGAM 
  ORBITAL PASSAGE
• 22:00
  LUTZZ&BOG.
  RHIZOME CYBORG LULLABIES

Saturday, October 10^th, 2026

• 16:00
  VEZA FERNÁNDEZ · LENS KÜHLEITNER · ONEKA VON SCHRADER
  ONEIRIC CHOIRS
• 17:30
  NAZANIN MEHRAEIN
  AXIS -0-
• 19:00
  ARTIST TALK
  Hosted by Oneka von Schrader
• 20:00
  LUIGI GUERRIERI
  POOR GUY
• 21:30
  DAPHNE VON SCHRADER · DAVID PRIDAL
  MØNTAGE CHOIR JAM
  Voices · Electronics · Interactive Jam

Sunday, October 11^th, 2026

• 11:00
  BRUNCH BY AARON
  AUTUMN NIGHTSHADES
• 13:00
  MEHRTA SHIRZADIAN
  ECHOES OF THE MOUNTAIN 
• 14:30
  ELISABETH HARNIK & IRENA Z. TOMAŽIN
  WHISPERING WALLS

 

Information on Travel and Accommodations

 

FRIDAY · 9 OCTOBER

 

MAGDALENA FORSTER

ECHO BODY – URHOF20 VERSION

Magdalena Forster develops a site-specific version of Echo Body for Kunsthaus Urhof20, bringing her artistic practice shaped by metalwork into dialogue with the mining history of the place and its surroundings.

Working with body, voice, material and sound, Forster approaches space as an acoustic workshop inhabited by animated things rather than passive objects. Her practice follows material-based processes and the logic of tactile interaction, craft and physical labour.
In Echo Body, body, material and environment enter into a reciprocal relationship. Listening becomes physical: matter is handled, sounded and encountered as something capable of acting back. 

Magdalena Forster is an artist based in Vienna. With a background in choreography and performing arts, her work is grounded in material-based processes and shaped by tactile interaction, craft practices and her previous experience in body-centred care work. She is interested in collaboration, live and score-based performance and site-specific practices closely connected to sonic research.

Echo Body (2025) was presented, among others, at ImPulsTanz Festival 2026 as part of the 8:tension series, in collaboration between Simiian Gallery and Dansehallerne Copenhagen, and at Systema Marseille. In 2026 she received the H13 Lower Austria Prize for Performance. 

 

BEA VON SCHRADER · GINA SCHWARZ · DIE.PUNTIGAM

ORBITAL PASSAGE

At the centre of ORBITAL PASSAGE is Aaron Beck’s circular metal sculpture Eiserne Seele. Metal receives vibration, carries sound and reflects light. Boundary meets circle, territory meets orbit, while industrial form and resonant body coexist. The sculpture’s opening evokes a membrane, a threshold, a passage – spatial as much as temporal.

An orbit is a relationship in motion. Dance, double bass, live light drawing and metal form a shared field in which every impulse can reorder relations – and tip them into moments of instability and chaos. A single tone, a line of light, a movement or a vibration can initiate a circulation that spreads through space and traces new trajectories.

ORBITAL PASSAGE unfolds within a field of attraction and distance, transmission and interference. Its four artistic positions send, receive and resonate. The passage takes shape as a physical practice of listening, in which relations continually form and transform.

From proximity, resonance and orbits, new worlds emerge.

Bea von Schrader is an Austrian performance artist, choreographer and artistic director of Urhof20 – Kunsthaus am Schneeberg. Her practice centres on Performance Composition, bringing body, sound, image and space into dialogue. In 2023, she received the Lower Austrian Award of Distinction for Performing Arts.

Gina Schwarz is a Vienna-based double bassist, composer and bandleader working across jazz, improvisation and contemporary music. Her practice encompasses international collaborations as well as her own ensembles and compositions.

Die.Puntigam is a painter and visual artist whose practice also includes live drawing, projection and Tagtool. He studied painting in Leipzig and works across analogue and digital image-making, often in direct relation to movement, sound and space.

• Dance / Performance: Bea von Schrader
• Double Bass: Gina Schwarz
• Live Visuals / Tagtool: Die.Puntigam
• Metal Sculpture: Aaron Beck

 

LUTZZ&BOG.

RHIZOME CYBORG LULLABIES

Voices, biodata, analogue electronics, and soft vibrations resonate into our bodies and gather us underground. Human and non-human bodies meet through sound. Lingering voices, spiral echoes, soil signals and fragments of a lullaby. Something moves beneath the surface, tender trans*missions, bodies becoming difficult to tell apart.

LUTZZ&BOG. (aka lutzz bog-lárk.) is a crip trans* performer, organiser and transdisciplinary artist. Their practice is grounded in a long-standing engagement with ecological, embodied crip*queerness, collectivity, connectivity and the corporeality of sound.

LUTZZ critically examines notions imposed on perception and the body – human and more-than-human – experimenting with artistic world-making rooted in post-extractivist fantasies. BOG. feels at home in collaborative speculative creation processes and has worked in artistic research projects and spaces engaging with alternative working and learning methods. 

 

 

SATURDAY · 10 OCTOBER

 

VEZA FERNÁNDEZ · LENS KÜHLEITNER · ONEKA VON SCHRADER

oneiric choirs

Three vocalists dream to choir as a means of relating through the amalgam of their dialoguing voices. The trio detects voice as material in space. Rooting the voice in organ tissue such as the lungs or the heart, or drawing vocals from landscapes of night dreams, each brings their own choiring practice to the encounter. 

Oneiric Choirs sparks the beginning of the trio as a performative choir, initiating future extended collaborations. For now, we ask while singing together: How do dream narratives enter vocal processing and choreographic choices? How do we learn to trace something that resonates? From where does something really resonate? Possibly from far beyond this body and this space we are in? Related and dedicated to the lungs, river snakes and infinite possibilities of what conducting can mean.

Concept, Choreography & Performance:
Veza Fernández · Lens Kühleitner · Oneka von Schrader

Veza Fernández is a dance, voice and performance artist based in Vienna. Her work explores the poetics and politics of vocal expression as a space for connection, imagination and transformation. She intertwines singing, writing, dancing and speaking as physical forms of study, experimentation and performance. She holds a Master’s degree in Choreography from DAS Graduate School in Amsterdam. 

Lens Kühleitner lives in Vienna and works at the intersection of music, performance and composition. Their practice unfolds across theatre, dance and performance contexts and is shaped by a particular sensitivity to resonance and collaborative composition. Recent works have been presented at brut Wien, ImPulsTanz Festival Wien and Schauspielhaus Wien.

Oneka von Schrader works as a choreographer, performer, singer and artistic advisor. Her practice moves through choreography, voice, somatics and dream work, with current research exploring intersections of art, illness, anatomy and feminism. She studied choreography at SNDO Amsterdam and Shiatsu in Vienna. 

 

NAZANIN MEHRAEIN

AXIS -0-

AXIS -0- is a performance project in development combining body puppetry, movement, objects and interactive digital visuals.

The project centres on Neonblaufisch, a fish-headed woman embodied through a wearable body puppet. Through a sequence of everyday actions – watering plants, cleaning, resting, dressing, waiting – the character moves between dream and reality, vulnerability and resistance.
Inspired by stories of women in Auschwitz and shaped by Mehraein’s experience as an Iranian artist living abroad during periods of war and communication blackouts, the work explores how ordinary gestures of care and repetition can preserve dignity and connection during uncertain times. 

Nazanin Mehraein is a multidisciplinary artist based in Vienna, originally from Tehran. Coming from a theatre puppetry background as a director and dramaturg, she works across performance, film, body puppetry and interactive video installation. Her practice focuses on autobiographical storytelling, exploring migration, memory, politics and women’s experiences through transdisciplinary performance and visual media. 

• Concept & Performance: Nazanin Mehraein
• Digital Artist: Mehdi Bakhshi

 

LUIGI GUERRIERI

POOR GUY

When does the narration of my personal traumas become an exercise of narcissism?

POOR GUY is a performative autoethnography that explores narratives of self-fashioning and identification while questioning trauma-plots and victimhood.
It is a quest for the nuances and complexities of the desire to be seen, heard and understood, as well as the tension between vulnerability and exhibitionism. The performance challenges the moral dichotomy between victims and perpetrators while navigating the intersection of personal and political storytelling.

POOR GUY is a narcissistic project that questions a narcissistic world, using the same weapon. 

Luigi Guerrieri is a performance artist with a background in anthropology. His works question deeply rooted cultural concepts, mixing text, irony, physical improvisation, voice, obsessive repetitions and autoethnography. When not on stage, Luigi writes, takes care of his children, works sporadically as a cook and posts short videos on social media. 

• Concept & Performance: Luigi Guerrieri
• Outside Eye: Alberto Cissello
• Light Design: Anna Bauer

A co-production by Luigi Guerrieri and Theater am Werk.
Supported by Tanz*Hotel and Bears in the Park. 

 

MØNTAGE CHOIR JAM

Voices · Electronics · Interactive Jam

Emerging from MØNTAGE CAMP 2026, MØNTAGE CHOIR JAM brings artists and audience together in an open session of voice, sound and collective improvisation.

With multiple microphones, electronic effects and live processing, Daphne von Schrader and David Pridal create a sonic setting that can be entered and transformed by different voices. Artists present at the festival initiate vocal warm-ups and impulses, gradually opening the session towards collective experimentation.

Voices multiply, overlap, shift and respond to one another. Individual sounds become part of a temporary choir, moving between acoustic voice and electronic transformation. The audience is invited to join at different moments – listening, responding and becoming part of the evolving soundscape.

MØNTAGE CHOIR JAM is not a fixed composition, but a shared space for listening, experimentation and collective sounding.

• Sound / Electronics: Daphne von Schrader · David Pridal
• Vocal Warm-ups / Impulses: participating festival artists
• Voices: artists & audience

 

SUNDAY · 11 OCTOBER

 

MEHRTA SHIRZADIAN

ECHOES OF THE MOUNTAIN

Echoes of the Mountain is a participatory performance exploring the mountain as a living acoustic space where sound, memory and collective presence intertwine. Inspired by the phenomenon of echo, the audience becomes part of an evolving composition through vocalisation, repetition, movement and delayed responses. As voices travel through the landscape and return transformed, the boundaries between speaker and listener begin to dissolve.

Developed through research into the history and acoustic character of the site, the performance reflects on how landscapes preserve traces of those who have passed through them. The mountain is approached not as a passive backdrop but as an active collaborator that receives, reshapes and returns every action.

Echoes of the Mountain invites participants to experience listening as a collective act and echo as a dialogue between bodies, place and time. 

Mehrta Shirzadian is a performance and multimedia artist as well as an artistic researcher. Her interdisciplinary practice transforms scientific perspectives into performative experiences exploring microbial life, sound, bodily ecologies and collective rituals. Through participatory and site-specific works, she investigates embodiment, vulnerability and agency, creating encounters that question how human and non-human bodies are shaped by systems of knowledge, power and representation. 

• Concept, Direction & Performance: Mehrta Shirzadian
• Scenography: Stephan Trimmel

 

ELISABETH HARNIK & IRENA Z. TOMAŽIN

WHISPERING WALLS

Whispering Walls brings together pianist Elisabeth Harnik and vocalist Irena Z. Tomažin, two internationally renowned composers and improvisers.

Their collaboration weaves together multiple voices of improvisation, composition, folk melodies and silenced voices. The duo moves through contemporary jazz, new and experimental music, sound poetry, free improvisation, folk song and performance art.

Through their persistent physical presence within sound, Tomažin and Harnik move beyond established genre conventions: the voice becomes body, the piano a sound object.

Spectral sounds, intense dissonances, swirling pulses and rhythms, laments and poems unfold through their free interplay. Ancient sonic traces encounter the heritage of the avant-garde; sensual beauty meets convulsive noise. Two physical and sounding bodies move along the threshold between noise and tone, creating sound sculptures that carry sediments of tradition while remaining radically present in the moment.

Based on a text by Luka T. Zagoričnik. 

Irena Z. Tomažin is a vocalist, performer, dancer/choreographer and artist whose practice moves between experimental music, voice, sound poetry and contemporary performance.

Elisabeth Harnik is an Austrian pianist and composer working internationally in improvised and contemporary music. Her practice explores the piano as an expanded sonic field through improvisation, composition, objects and extended techniques. 

• Voice: Irena Z. Tomažin
• Piano, Toy Piano & Objects: Elisabeth Harnik

 

 

AROUND THE FESTIVAL
 

ARTIST TALK

An opportunity to meet the artists beyond the performances and gain insight into artistic processes, working methods and the questions behind the works.

Hosted by Oneka von Schrader

SCREENS – VIDEO & PHOTOGRAPHY 2026

Works, Residencies & Projects at Kunsthaus Urhof20

During the festival breaks, three screens in the corridor invite visitors to encounter works and artistic processes developed at Kunsthaus Urhof20 throughout 2026.

Moving images and photographic fragments from performances, residencies and collaborative projects trace the year of (RE)SONANT MATTER – extending the festival into the wider artistic programme of Kunsthaus Urhof20.

INSTALLATION · LUCA MALINA

IDO
from the project TON IM TON

Ido emerges from Ton im Ton, Luca Malina’s experimental exploration of the relationship between ceramics and sound. Depending on its composition, density and firing process, clay develops not only different surfaces and tactile qualities, but its own resonant characteristics.

Suspended ceramic elements made from different clays form a sounding body that responds to its surroundings. The installation can be played by wind, by touch and by the movement of visitors entering its space. Small gestures set the ceramic pieces into motion; provided mallets invite visitors to strike individual elements and discover their different tones.

Sound is never fixed. It emerges through material, movement and encounter – resonance made tangible.

 

FESTIVAL KITCHEN

AUTUMN NIGHTSHADES

Throughout the festival, Aaron Beck creates a vegan festival kitchen – food as another opportunity to gather, pause, exchange and spend time together.

Friday · 19:00–23:00
Saturday · 16:00–22:00
Sunday · 11:00 · BRUNCH BY AARON

 

 

ANGEWANDTE PERFORMANCE LAB

University of Applied Arts Vienna · Open Call & Residencies

Thank you APL for the collaboration and support in creating an open call, bringing three artists to the festival: LUTZZ&BOG., Mehrta Shirzadian and Nazanin Mehraein. Each artist also received residency time at Kunsthaus Urhof20 and the University of Applied Arts Vienna to further develop their work.