HANNOVER.- With CRASH PIPE (2026), the Austrian choreographer and performance artist Florentina Holzinger realizes a new halfpipe installation in the public space of Hannover. The work is developed in collaboration with the architectural collective raumlaborberlin and was initiated by Kunstverein Hannover.

Constructed from around eight tons of metal, the halfpipe has first been installed on Sophienstraße in the Kulturdreieck, in front of Künstlerhaus Hannover, and will subsequently continue on Raschplatz Hannover.

The installation understands itself as a form of temporary architecture and, at the same time, as a performative instrument: a rideable structure that enables movement, encounter, and use in public space. Skaters are invited to appropriate the halfpipe and use it for two months in the heart of the city. The metal construction, supported by decommissioned vehicles, simultaneously recalls a stage set and translates central motifs from Florentina Holzinger’s artistic practice into the urban environment.

As a sculptural intervention in the city, CRASH PIPE combines elements of skate culture, public space, and artistic intervention. The installation shifts the boundaries between artwork and use: it is simultaneously object, infrastructure, and stage.

Movement becomes a formative element that continually reactivates the space and comments on the “right to the city”, particularly in a city like Hannover, where the debate around the use of streets appears highly ideological. In recent years, an intense discourse has emerged around buzzwords and competing concepts of the “car-oriented”, “car-free”, and “low-car” city. CRASH PIPE, somewhat apocalyptic in appearance, humorously plays, as a usable recreational structure, with the potential of cars in inner cities.

In this way, the work connects to central questions of the parallel exhibition Under the Milky Way. Abstraction, Autonomy and Post-Vandal Tendencies in Contemporary Art, which examines artistic strategies between the appropriation of urban space, autonomy, and abstract visual language.

An earlier version of the artwork was realized as part of the exhibition Radical Playgrounds at Gropius Bau in Berlin. For Hannover, the installation has been newly developed and conceived for the urban city space for the first time.

The project takes place in the context of the exhibition Under the Milky Way. Abstraction, Autonomy and Post-Vandal Tendencies in Contemporary Art (28 March – 19 July 2026) at Kunstverein Hannover and is developed in cooperation with Kommunales Kino Hannover (KoKi), the Cumberlandsche Bar, and Literaturhaus Hannover.

Florentina Holzinger (1986, Vienna) is considered one of the most influential choreographers working internationally today. In her radical and physically demanding performances, she examines the representation of the female body and deliberately blurs the boundaries between high culture, pop, stunt, and entertainment. Holzinger studied choreography at the School for New Dance Development (SNDO) in Amsterdam. Her graduation solo Silk (2012) was awarded the Prix Jardin d’Europe at the ImPulsTanz Festival. She gained international attention with works such as Apollon (2017), TANZ (2019), Etude for an Emergency (2020), and Ophelia’s Got Talent (2022). For TANZ she received the Nestroy Theatre Prize for Best Direction, while Ophelia’s Got Talent was awarded the German theatre prize Der Faust. In 2024, Holzinger realized her first opera project with SANCTA. In the same year, she took on a leading role in the film MOND (directed by Kurdwin Ayub), which received the Special Jury Prize at the Locarno Film Festival. Her works have been repeatedly invited to the Berliner Theatertreffen. In 2026, she will represent Austria at the 61st Venice Biennale.