The three teams of curators finally joined for the fourth location, the Habsburg fortress at Fortezza/Franzensfeste, for the collaborative project titled “Scenarios.” Built in the 1830s, this fortress has never been attacked, and stands on the mountain like a silent monument to a permanent state of alert. Here 10 writers including Adriana Cavarero, Arundhati Roy, Thomas Meinecke, and Glen Neath contributed texts inspired by the venue’s history and symbolism; spoken by actors, these were installed there as sound works. The massive architecture was filled with nothing but voices, whispered narrations, echoes, and pauses, transforming each building into the perfect set for a play about memory, fear, paranoia, and control. The radical use of sound alone—except for five silent movies by Harun Farocki, Karø Goldt, Larry Gottheim, Karl Kels, and Michael Snow, screened at the complex’s core—turned the overused concept of site-specifi city into a profound and joyful perceptual experience. The blend of theatricality, fiction, and public recollection was absorbing, the conceptualization of recording techniques and emptiness refreshing compared with the current abuse of the image of the “phantom” in the contemporary art debate. This was a convincing and sensitive allegory of Europe’s ambivalent inner nature, expressed through multiple voices, fear, and self-protection.

  "Manifesta 7" originally appeared in the October 2008 issue of Modern Painters. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Modern Painters' October 2008 Table of Contents.