Unsere
Veranstaltungen
8. November 2025 11 - 17 Uhr
The Tag Conference Vienna
Now in its ninth year, the travelling Tag Conference continues to spearhead and deepen the study of tagging, a pivotal yet often overlooked form of public art. This Vienna instalment is produced in partnership with Kyselakproject and Spraycity.at.
The conference will be held in English, with the exception of the Friday evening programme, which will be conducted in German.
THE UNSUNG TAGS OF THE ROMANTIC ERA
In commemoration of the 200th anniversary of Joseph Kyselak’s iconic journey across the Alps, this instalment of the conference lays a special focus on the rich legacy of public name-writing in Romantic times.
Kyselak, a Vienna-born civil servant, was a pioneer in the exploration of natural landscapes. The many marks he left along his travels made him a legend in Austria and established him as the foremost trailblazer of modern-day graffiti.
Yet Kyselak was far from the only tagger of his time. From the Romantic period onwards, inscribing one’s name on ancient ruins was commonplace among pioneering leisure travellers, as evidenced by the layers of autographs that survive to this day—including those of Byron and Rimbaud.
This wave of public name-writing marked the first widespread graffiti craze in modern Western history, and can be seen as a direct precursor to today’s tagging.
As part of the conference programme, Bezirksmuseum Mariahilf will present a photo exhibition documenting decades of graffiti in Mariahilf, curated by local expert Stefan Wogrin with images from his enduring archive Spraycity.at.
Lectures at Bezirksmuseum Mariahilf will be held beside an expansive 1:60 scale model built between 1887 and 1904 that recreates the district as it was during Kyselak’s time.
