SPIRAL BIKE – Resonance & Resistance

SPIRAL BIKE – Resonance & Resistance transforms Vienna’s Prater and the RAD Spirals into a space of resonance for performance, music, and activism. The project takes as its point of departure the resistant jazz subculture of the Schlurfs in Vienna during the 1930s and 1940s under National Socialist rule.

The legendary jazz nights of the 2. Wiener Kaffeehaus (Second Viennese Coffee House) became an important meeting point for the scene. It was here that Franziska Votypka was introduced to Vienna’s jazz culture by a fellow Schlurfin. Wearing a yellow tie, an oversized jacket, and a men’s hat, appearance became an attitude: clothing, style, and nocturnal mobility turned into practices of claiming visibility, freedom, and urban space. What may appear as fashion was also a form of transgression—a gesture of resistant bodies occupying public space.

Through bicycles, choirs, Soundbikes, DJ sets, live music, performance and literary interventions, the project revisits historical forms of counterculture. It connects them to contemporary questions of visibility, body politics, and antifascist resistance in public space.

A historical song lyric by the Schlurfin Franziska Votypka (1927–1997) captures this ambivalence: “Denn pfeiff ma ihnen auf die Arbeit, und kumman nächtelang net z’haus” (“We don’t give a damn about work, and we stay out all night”). Situated between patriarchal language and subcultural self-assertion, the lyric reveals tensions that continue to resonate today: Who is allowed to move freely, to be loud, to be out at night, to occupy space, and to celebrate, and under what conditions?

Composer Mario Bergamasco and the Construction Choir Collective lead a cycling choir performance along the Prater Hauptallee. Historical Schlurf songs are sung collectively and merge with electronic soundscapes and the sonic textures of the Prater, creating a moving acoustic experience between choir, urban space, and collective resonance. Along the route, audiences encounter musicians and writers, including Anna Weidenholzer and Jopa Jotakin, whose texts and compositions offer insights into the history of the Schlurfs while tracing their echoes in contemporary forms of resistance, language, and collective practice.

Mona Matbou Riahi creates a musical dialogue between jazz and techno, guiding the Soundride across Danube Island, today one of Vienna’s most important spaces for free party culture, collective gathering, and the appropriation of public space. Electric Indigo transforms the RAD Spiral into a carousel, a site of early subcultural appropriation where the Schlurfs gathered, occupied public space, and played their records. Within this resonance, she guides audiences through rotating acoustic environments and shifting sonic perspectives.

ZAK – Zentrum für Antidisziplinäre Kunst reimagines the site as Café Schlurf, inspired by the former 2. Wiener Kaffeehaus (Second Viennese Coffee House). There, audiences encounter saxophonist Edith Lettner as well as the political electro-punk project Laut Fragen, completing an evening that bridges historical memory, collective listening, and contemporary forms of cultural resistance.

Artists SPIRAL BIKE

Electric Indigo
Susanne Kirchmayr aka Electric Indigo is a DJ, composer, and musician from Vienna, Austria, who has performed in 46 countries around the globe since 1989. Her name stands for an intelligent and distinctive interpretation of techno and electronic music. In 1998, she founded the transnational network female:pressure and has been running its website and database ever since. She has received several awards, among them the Kunstpreis Musik 2020 of the Republic of Austria.
https://indigo-inc.at

Mona Matbou Riahi
Mona Matbou Riahi, born in Tehran, is a captivating musician whose her passion for music led her to the Tehran Conservatory of Music during her formative years. At the age of 17, she embarked on a transformative journey, venturing to Vienna to further her studies at the Vienna University of Music and Performing Arts (MDW). Since then, Vienna has become her playground, where she thrives as a performer, composer, and improviser.
https://www.monamatbouriahi.com/

Mario Bergamasco
Mario Bergamasco studied classical guitar at the Prayner Conservatory in Vienna, as well as instrumental and vocal pedagogy at the Landeskonservatorium Feldkirch and the Berlin University of the Arts. In addition to his studies in classical guitar, he concentrated on composition, mainly focusing on contemporary compositional techniques. He gives regular concerts and has played several international tours in different formations. His musical work is determined by stylistic diversity and includes compositions for theatre and film, as well as solo, ensemble and vocal works. 
https://mariobergamasco.com/

Construction Choir Collective
Construction Choir Collective was founded in 2019 at the intersection of experimental singing and performance. They bring choral music beyond traditional venues into public space, challenging hierarchies between performers and audiences. Their multilingual repertoire spans contemporary works, madrigals, and folklore music, while a strong collaborative approach defines their socially embedded artistic practice.
https://constructionchoircollective.cc

Jopa Jotakin
jopa jotakin – poetry, experimental art, performance. Vienna. member of Kulturverein Einbaumöbel and the Grillhendl Rotation Crew, as well as the Grazer Autorinnen Autorenversammlung. Together with the artist Andrea Knabl, jotakin runs the edition tagediebin and, alongside Apollonia T. Bitzan, Lydia Haider and Mercedes Kornberger, organises the monthly reading series Blumenmontag at Café Stadtbahn. Most recently: im darknet sind alle katzen miau. Gedichte. edition zzoo, Vienna 2021. As editor (together with Andrea Knabl): Nestbeschmutzer*in #4 – streichfähig. edition tagediebin, Vienna 2025
https://www.jopa-jotakin.at/i

Anna Weidenholzer
Anna Weidenholzer, born in Linz in 1984, lives in Vienna. Her first novel “Winter is Good for Fish”, was nominated for the Leipzig Book Fair Prize. In 2013, she was awarded the Reinhard Priessnitz Prize. Her novel “Why the Men Are Wearing Starfish” was nominated for the German Book Prize in 2016. In 2017, she received the Republic of Austria’s Outstanding Artist Award for Literature. Most recent publication: “Find a Swan a Boat” (short stories, Matthes & Seitz Berlin).
https://www.annaweidenholzer.at/

Laut Fragen & Edith Lettner
The Viennese duo Laut Fragen operates at the intersection of post-punk, experimental electronic music, and pop. Their sound is refreshingly unpredictable and contemporary: danceable beats collide with guitar feedback, and melodic hooks are torn apart by noise and vocal samples. Their album “Facetten des Widerstandes” is dedicated to historical anti-fascist resistance—including the phenomenon of the “Schlurfs.” At the RAD performance, the duo will be joined by Edith Lettner on saxophone.
https://linktr.ee/lautfragen

ZAK – Zentrum für Antidisziplinäre Kunst
2020 wurde das Zentrum für Antidisziplinäre Kunst (ZAK) gegründet, um künstlerische Projekte und Kollaborationen in diversen Kontexten zu ermöglichen. Mit dem Stück „UFO | ultra fett original“ gewann das Kollektiv im Jahr 2021 den Newcomer-Theaterpreis im Theater Drachengasse. Dieses antidisziplinäre Spektakel, das sich mit dem österreichischen Schnitzelfetischismus befasst, markierte den Beginn der Zusammenarbeit von Desi Bonato, Jessica Comis, Aurelia van Kempen und Eva Sommer, die bis heute das künstlerische Kernteam des Zentrums bilden.
http://www.antidisziplinaer.com/