Unkengesang
sound art, installation
Vienna, 2026
How do we mediate attention and responsibility across distance?
PROJECT BY
ADVISORS
Carolina Caballero
Klara Hofinger
Selma Mühlbauer
Angela Ying Neubauer
Julia Herzog
Tereza Oxana Sykorova
Supported by arts of change, forum n
Unkengesang is an interdisciplinary artistic exploration of the Donauauen nature reserve. At its center is the Lobau, a rare wetland within the city of Vienna, both a vital habitat and a long-contested political site due to decade old plans of digging a tunnel beneath it.
In an immersive installation a layered soundscape of altered Lobau field recordings brings an uncertain future to life. The poetic narrative of the voices of the fire-bellied toads speak to the fragility of the ecosystem and the moral dilemma of tunneling beneath protected nature reserves and habitats. The “Unkenruf” (German for the call of the fire-bellied toad, also an allegory for an omen of doom) becomes a multifaceted metaphor: a warning, a prediction, and a symbol of resilient life.
The project invites visitors to listen to the Lobau as a complex, interwoven organism existing beyond the human perspective.
Field recordings capture mosquitos, bats and tree frogs alongside the rumble of a highway and planes overhead. The Lobau is a wetland under stress: the regulated Danube no longer floods its banks, disrupting essential water cycles, while climate change accelerates the drying. The planned Lobau tunnel, debated for decades and scientifically disputed in its impact and effectiveness, would carve through the already fragile ground.