postMORTEM An Installation by Kollektiv Nachsitzen

26 / 11 / 17

The "Stories Of Critical Change" series by kulturtankstelle of the Kunstuni Linz displays the installation "postMortem" as part of the IFK conference "Alles bröckelt" from 17th-19th Jannuary 2024.

The installation "postMORTEM" not only celebrates the "life", "death" and subsequent "survival" of the former “Postverteilerzentrum” as well as the “Bahnhofspostamt”, located at the Main station next to the Westrailline in Linz, it also reflects on the consequences of neglect, when former state institutions get partly privatized.

After only 20 years of use, the “Postverteilerzentrum” has been largely empty since 2014 because the post is no longer distributed by rail but by car again. The property, which once belonged to the state, is now up for demolition since it is expected to generate high returns on the real estate market.

Various items from the history of the buildings and their uses are displayed on an altar made from postal parcels (films, interviews, images, planning material, newspaper articles, etc.).
We want to highlight the beauty, the value, the people who worked there and ask how did privatization, digitization and increased efficiency, changed postal workers working environments and their spatial surroundings? Which services and interests are being represented by the Post today, which in the past? How can participation and the pursuit of common interests, interim use and re-use be of spaces that lost their “function” come together? Which perspective do we gain by examining the term “ruin” and could we develop an architectural tool out of it?


"When its use is spent and it becomes a ruin, the wonder of its beginning appears again." (Louis I. Kahn, Architecture: Silence and Light, 1970)