Public Sauna

Flachau, Austria

22.01.2026 – 24.01.2026

for “minus20degrees”

WELLNESS-ANTI-ANTI+ is an abstracted Brechelbad – a communal place to sweat, labor, and rest together. Since the 13th century, the Brechelbad served in Alpine regions as a space for breaking and processing flax fibers for linen production. Beyond that, the building — with its shared fireplace — offered room for many other things: baking bread, drying fruit, or communal sweating. This multipurpose use made the Brechelbad an important meeting point, commonly owned – a place of exchange and participation. The reinterpreted Brechelbad in Flachau is now a large, steaming pile of woodchips, a place we inhabit together. Who hasn‘t dreamed of a holiday in a compost heap? WELLNESS-ANTI-ANTI+ makes it possible. The microorganisms do the work for us – they generate the heat. Instead of flax, we process nettle fibers. With this project we questioned traditional notions of ownership and labor, and celebrates communal sweating, softening, and becoming fragile – open and without hardness.

We want everything wrapped in damp cloths!

BECOMING SOFT

We aim to re-evaluate resilience, solidarity, and collective solutions,seeing fragility not as a deficit but as a shared human condition. WELLNESS-ANTI-ANTI+ becomes a space to celebrate this fragility. We seek ethics of vulnerability, understanding the Brechelbad as a place of equality where human fragility is celebrated in its nakedness.