With Para Bellum, composer Peter Kutin establishes an optoacoustic installation inside the so-called Tank Hall of Vienna’s Military Museum (Heeresgeschichtliches Museum), in which the massive steel bodies of these historic war machines appear fragmented through precisely orchestrated movements of LED lights.

The tanks become silhouettes, and their shadows take over—intensely flickering patterns emerge, triggering shifting soundscapes that sonically restructure the space. Images emerge and dissolve—any sense of anticipation seems to be suspended. A shadowy noise ballet unfolds, an obscure marche funèbre.

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For a long time, not only these tanks but also the very concept of war in Central Europe seemed consigned to the museum—static and immobile, something that belongs to the past. Para Bellum dissolves this rigidity as a media meditation of sound and light that challenges our perception and points towards a future long thought impossible.

Following recent works such as Unstable Horizon / Warface (2024) and Skyfall (2026), as well as the film score for the documentary Militantropos, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2025, Para Bellum marks a renewed engagement by Kutin with the omnipresent topic of war.

Opening Hours
More information to follow.

Address
Heeresgeschichtliches Museum - Tank Hall
Franz-Grill-Straße 13
1030 Vienna