This is about more than the sausage: snack bars and sausage stands are transformed into cultural places that bring people from different disciplines together.
“From stand to stand, it’s like an addiction”: When Kreiml & Samurai wrote an anthem for the sausage stand culture, the “Wiener Würstelstand” immediately found it “leiwand” and now organizes concerts next to the stand. In 2024, the Würstelstand institution was added to the UNESCO list of intangible cultural heritage, and since then there has been greater attention to how unique it is: as a place for cravings, gatherings – and cultural interventions with which operators want to reinvent it.
Change of course: The Viennese sausage stand near Spittelau wants to break with the idealized image of the sausage stand, but it is still cozy there.Viennese sausage stand
The first to recognize the Standl as a cultural asset in the urban space were Inanna Wolf and Luca Tamussino from “Anzeige”. Five years ago they opened their snack bar for food and culture on Porcelain Lane and converted a newspaper stand for it. Especially in the dignified Alsergrund, they are keen to give subcultures a stage. There are no sausages in the daily offering, but there are occasional ones at pop-ups. The basic idea here is: cultural revitalization. In May they will show sculptures in the showcase, at the beginning of July they will join “Rumwurschteln”, the Vienna Würstel Festival, as a venue and want to show concerts on their roof again soon.
At the edition, the band Lusterboden gave a concert on the roof on the smallest stage, but with a large crowd in front of the stand.Max Stefan Peternell
At the Viennese sausage stand in Spittelau there are no noise-sensitive neighbors and there are regular comedy, drag and DJ lines. And sausage tradition, you might think. But the “Muschi eats Wurst” festival has just been implemented, with the question: Can the sausage stand – often romanticized, but also a “hypermasculine pork palace,” according to operator Mike Lanner – be feminist? He also wants to curate the stand in a less traditional way in the near future.
The “Hot Box On Air” experimental setup is also looking for new additions as part of the Climate Biennale. The Friendship agency, architect Clemens Bauder and designer Letitia Lehner came up with a mobile installation for the Capital of Culture 2024 as a further development of the sausage stand, which is now moving in front of the Funkhaus.
There it is also a radio station: it is played non-stop in an interdisciplinary manner for 30 hours, and at night it continues as a live stream as a radio program. New faces in the gastronomy scene, such as Bistro Fantasy and Estúdio Schumi, are contributing to this. And because things are supposed to accumulate here that prove what fits into a sausage stand, there is also a radio play, concert, yoga, a craft workshop, and a literature show in the morning hours.
The “Hot Box” made its first appearance as part of the Capital of Culture 2024, and is now being used in a new way in front of the Vienna Funkhaus at the Climate Biennale.Hannes plaintiff
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New addition: The Hot Box Building will be in front of the Funkhaus from April 24th to 25th.
