Edgar Honetschläger

2018: The artist and filmmaker Edgar Honetschläger founded the non-profit organization GoBugsGo in collaboration with art historians, biologists, ecologists, lawyers and economists. As a bold counterpoint to dystopia, GoBugsGo offers an unprecedented and very concrete approach: Its objective is to acquire parcels of land around the globe and declare them Non-Human Zones. As defined in the statutes of the NPO these zones are “not to be used or set foot on by humans from they day of acquisition onward”. They become safe havens for insects, birds and all other non-human creatures. To secure these sanctuaries GoBugsGo relies on the following mechanism: People who join the movement become stakeholders in the NPO GoBugsGo and therefore part owners of stretches of land pre-selected by a scientific committee. While individual ownership bears the risk of expropriation, collective ownership makes it very difficult for politicians, states or any other institutions to disown or re-designate GoBugsGo land. Furthermore, by declaring GoBugsGo’s Non-Human Zones to be works of art, ‘copyright laws’ make them untouchable. The radical and maximal claim to completely withdraw land from human influence opens a broader debate while challenging the paradigms underlying our concept of nature.

GoBugsGo is not the product of otherworldly dreaming, but of an utopian realism born from the idea of developing a future for the environment and our social coexistence shaped by an artistic practice. By jointly acquiring land and converting it into collective ownrship, common interest in the preservation of the basis of all our lives takes precedence over an individual’s shortsighted motivation to make a profit.

2026: GoBugsGo has some 1500 members, nine parcels of land have been acquired covering some 90 acres of Non-Human Zones. 2023: Honetschläger realized a permanent Installation for the BOKU University in Vienna based on the INSECT MANIFESTO which he had worked out with the entomologist Dominique Zimmermann. This art manifesto and excerpts from it are on display as What bugs you? in the TONSPUR_passage together with the sounds of insects that the artist has recorded over the year in an arrangement by Peter Szely. Become a buggy @ g gobugsgo.org

Edgar Honetschläger, born in Linz, Austria in 1967, lives and works in Vienna and Rome, Italy.

TONSPUR 97
Edgar Honetschläger
What bugs you?
8-channel soundwork, 7-part series of A1 images
duration endless
concept, audio recordings, drawings A1 images Edgar Honetschläger manifesto Edgar Honetschläger & Dominique Zimmermann
design manifesto Dominik Hruza
sound composition & installation setup Peter Szely
production TONSPUR Kunstverein Wien
artistic director Georg Weckwerth
special thanks Christoph Thun-Hohenstein

TONSPUR_passage | Micro Museum for Sound
preview Sun 16 Aug, 17:00
introduction Christoph Thun-Hohenstein

TONSPUR_passage | Micro Museum for Sound
TONSPUR Kunstverein Wien
17.8..–15.11.2026
daily 10–20 h
endless