A building complex soon to be torn down; a theatre preparing for a big move – each action carries the awareness of a ‘last time’ and everything that has happened in this place so far. Choreographer Karin Pauer and visual artist Aldo Giannotti have been creating projects together for a long time. Their piece FOR NOW marks the end of brut Wien’s final season at the venue in Nordwestbahnstraße. The site-specific performance installation reflects on saying goodbye. It identifies the time of farewell as a threshold where a collective moment intensifies while a place is perceived and activated communally for one last time, aware of its history and impending disappearance.

Across three evenings, the longitudinal wall in the yard at brut nordwest becomes the surface of an evolving mural. Over several hours each evening, performers follow a repetitive score in which drawing, movement, voice and sound gradually accumulate. In this work, Pauer and Giannotti deliberately favour slowness over exploitability, proposing an alternative to the productivity-driven pace that often shapes contemporary life. By resisting speed and efficiency, the performance opens a different sense of time: one in which attention, care and togetherness take precedence over completion and production. As audiences move through a looping parkours, into spaces of the theatre, that are usually not accessible to everyone, they encounter shifting atmospheres, subtle invitations and quiet disruptions. The venue itself becomes an active frame, drawing attention to its histories, its present and its disappearance.

Karin Pauer is a performer/choreographer based in Vienna. All her pieces are informed by exploring relationships, the in-between, empathy and togetherness. She negotiates these terms by combining embodied choreographic practices with language, visual art and live music. In 2008, she finished her bachelor’s degree (BA) in choreography at the ArtEZ Institute of Arts in Arnheim, the Netherlands. Since then, she has worked with choreographers, theatre directors, film-makers and visual artists such as Doris Uhlich, Random Scream/Davis Freeman, Mike O’Connor, Maureen Kägi, Veronika Franz, Katrin Hornek and Aldo Giannotti. Since 2015, she has regularly co-operated with the Austrian-based dance company Liquid Loft/Chris Haring. Karin Pauer received the danceWEB scholarship in 2009 and the TURBO residency in 2012, both as part of the ImPulsTanz festival. In 2018, she was awarded the Austrian Federal Chancellor’s Office’s START scholarship. In 2020, she was nominated for the EU-wide choreography platform Creative Crossroads as part of Life Long Burning. Her own creations have been presented, among other places, at ImPulsTanz, Tanzquartier Wien, Donaufestival, brut Wien, the Wiener Festwochen, the MAMbo Museum in Bologna and various international festivals. Her co-operations with visual artists Katrin Hornek and Aldo Giannotti have been shown at Secession Wien, Bank Austria Kunstforum and Belvedere 21. Karin Pauer has been connected to brut Wien by a long-term collaboration, resulting on the following co-productions over previous seasons: THE SCORE (2020), HOUSE OF CONSTRUCTS (2024, both with Aldo Giannotti), WE WERE NEVER ONE (2022 and 2023 as part of Choreographic Platform Austria), AVA (2024) and LOW (2025).

Aldo Giannotti, born in Genova in 1977, is a visual artist who has lived and worked in Vienna since 2000. Drawing is central to his artistic practice, serving as a medium to explore and communicate socio-architectural, socio-political, and socio-cultural themes. Giannotti studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Carrara, Italy; Wimbledon College of Arts in London; and the Akademie der bildenden Künste in Munich, Germany. His work has been exhibited and realized in collaboration with numerous institutions, including Albertina Vienna, Kunsthalle Wien, Lentos Museum Linz, OK Center Linz, Kunsthaus Graz, Kunstraum Niederösterreich Vienna, Ar/ge kunst Bolzano, Künstlerhaus Dortmund, Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Austrian Cultural Forum London, Donaufestival Krems, Museum Sztuki Łódź, and Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb, among others. In 2024, Giannotti presented his durational performative solo exhibition HOUSE OF CONSTRUCTS, in collaboration with choreographer Karin Pauer, at Kunstforum Bank Austria in Vienna. In 2021, he showcased his solo exhibition Safe and Sound at MAMbo Museum d’Arte Moderna in Bologna. He has received several accolades, including the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant (2020), first prize at the Austrian Graphic Competition at Kunsthalle Innsbruck (2019), the Pomilio Blumm Prize in Milan (2017) and the Recognition Award from Strabag Kunstforum Vienna (2016).