On the Croatian island of Lopud Francesca von Habsburg has been involved in numerous conservation as well as contemporary art projects. Aside from the Your black horizon Art Pavilion, that is to provide the island with a unique space for art, the program comprises a series of efforts to maintain and renovate some of the island’s important historic heritage: its Franciscan monastery, its 16th century fortress, the revitalization of the Renaissance gardens. To revive the historic Renaissance gardens Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary invited French architect François Roche and Stéphanie Lavaux (R&Sie(n)) to conceive of an architectural intervention on the upper terraces of the garden.> >

The Evening Line is a sketch for a larger structure, a much, much larger structure, potentially the size of the universe. This larger structure is called The Morning Line and it was conceived by Matthew Ritchie as an inherently collaborative space, an interdisciplinary intersection for information congruence, where artists, architects, engineers, physicists and musicians would each contribute their own specialized information to create a new form; a mutable structure, with multiple expressions and narratives intertwining in its physical structure, projected video and innovative spatialized sound environments. Ritchie's own decade long artistic project of constructing a personal cosmology that incorporates the languages of science, myth and religion into a single systemic or ‘semasiographic’ visual language became a substrate for encoding these multiple narratives in a three dimensional structural system, in collaboration with Benjamin Aranda and Chris Lasch of terraswarm and Daniel Bosia of Arup AGU.> >

The Morning Line is a groundbreaking new experimental project by Matthew Ritchie, commissioned by Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary and designed in collaboration with architects Aranda / Lasch and Daniel Bosia of Arup Advanced Geometry Unit which explores the interdisciplinary interplays between art, architecture, mathematics, cosmology, music, and science. Developed since 2004 as a research / investigation for a new pavilion The Morning Line is challenging architectural convention: The team of collaborators has designed the first semiasographic building, an architectural language that directly expresses its content through its structure – a structure that is simultaneously generating itself and falling apart, enclosing an interactive environment inside which a possible future can be seen – and changed.

The foundation’s second architectonic commission inaugurates as part of the 3rd International Biennial of Contemporary Art of Seville in Spain. The opening premieres collaborative compositions which are being created by Bryce Dessner of The National, Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth, Thom Willems, composer in residence for the Ballet Frankfurt, Hector Parra, Florian Hecker and Mark Fell and Roc Jimenez and others.> >

"Imagine the formal presentation of poetry as evidence in a future war crimes tribunal. Imagine twenty sheets of paper floating forever in the wind…." (Amar Kanwar)

The Torn First Pages is a 20-channel video installation in three parts by the New Delhi-based artist and filmmaker Amar Kanwar made between 2003-08 and premiered at the Munich Haus der Kunst in its recently completed form. The work has been co-commissioned by Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary and will be shown in our exhibition space in Vienna in addition to works on Tibet from November 19th, 2008 onwards. > >