The Academy of Fine Arts Vienna has been working since 2023, with the conference series honoris causa, to examine its past under Austrofascism and National Socialism.
This year's conference opens with Jan Machacek's performance Axelmanns Fall in the Aula. The following day the conference runs all day, with topics including fascist art and literary history, graduates of the Master School of Architecture (1930–1950), and the Tiergarten in the Prater, on whose grounds the Academy's sculpture building stands today.
Media artist Jan Machacek examines in this performance – a spatially expansive audio-visual montage of historical research, family narrative and literary approach – his great-grandfather, the architect Alexander Popp. In the 1930s, together with Peter Behrens, he realised the Linz Tobacco Factory, a building that attracted much attention.