GGGNHM - Guggenheim in Floridsdorf?

Art project in public space from September 16, 2020 at Am Spitz in Floridsdorf, realized in cooperation with God’s Entertainment

SYNOPSIS:

GGGNHM - Guggenheim in Floridsdorf? was conceived and installed as a place for thought and practice in public space. In a playful way, it suggested a subtle reconfiguration of a place which opened up the city in all directions, starting from the Spitz in Floridsdorf, and actively questioned the established mechanisms of the art market. GGGNHM - Guggenheim in Floridsdorf? was a fictional museum devised as a temporary walk-in sculpture in the shape of the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

GGGNHM - Guggenheim in Floridsdorf? opened on September 16, 2020 with the exhibition series REMEMORY. The series consisted of three weekly changing exhibitions and ten happenings (so-called ‘Rememories’), all based on the Memory card game: a negotiation of different circumstances, ideas, potentials, as well as uncomfortable questions at a time where we are torn between the past and fear of the future.

With the support of the Cultural Department of the City of Vienna - MA7, SHIFT III - Basis Kultur Wien, and Bezirk Floridsdorf

                                    Photo: Peter Mayr

NIE SCHIESST DER FASCISMUS IN WIEN EIN GOAL! / FASCISM WILL NEVER SCORE IN VIENNA!

Performance in public space by God’s Entertainment & Karl Wratschko

SYNOPSIS:

At the 2nd International Workers’ Olympiad in Vienna in 1931, a banner with the inscription “Fascism Will Never Score in Red Vienna” was carried through the Prater Stadium. The masses cheered and the workers seemed strong and united in the fight against burgeoning fascism in Europe. From today’s perspective, this short sequence passed down to us in a film documenting the event from the 1930s is touching. Especially so knowing that Austrofascism was established only a short time after this event and it took just a few years for thousands of Viennese to cheer the invasion of German troops.

What would happen if a banner bearing the exact same line were used in a Viennese stadium today, almost 90 years later? Approval or protest? How much of which, and how fervent would they be?

Fascism Will Never Score in Vienna! aims to survey the political views of Austrian soccer fans. Sport, usually represented as apolitical, can in fact hardly be thought of without political orientation. Time and again, the actions of soccer fans become a political issue. At the last Vienna Derby on September 1, 2019, for example, some of the banners displayed in the stadium resulted in a police investigation. One of the banners was adorned with a skull and crossbones that strongly resembled the emblem of the SS, another pleaded for the reintroduction of the death penalty.

The reaction of the soccer fans to the banner “Fascism Will Never Score in Red Vienna” at the Vienna Derby on December 12, 2019 remains to be seen. Especially after the above-mentioned events at the last Vienna Derby, it will be especially interesting to see how and whether the fans of the two largest Viennese soccer clubs will position themselves. As we well know, fascism never sleeps …

With the support of the Cultural Department of the City of Vienna - MA7 and SHIFT III - Basis Kultur Wien

                                 Photo: Peter Mayr

EIN SPORTPLATZ / SPORTS GROUND

Performance in public space by God’s Entertainment & Karl Wratschko

SYNOPSIS:

Sports Ground takes place at “the sports ground Heldenplatz, a contemporary memory site par excellence” (© House of Austrian History). Large-scale sporting events — sometimes with a political background — have been held here since the 1920s, often virulently reminiscent of the crowd scenes in Einar Schleef’s/Elfriede Jelinek’s production Ein Sportstück. In the play, this location, occupying such a central place in the country, functions as a permanent place of political division and unification.

Interweaving motifs from Elfriede Jelinek’s Ein Sportstück and Thomas Bernhard’s Heldenplatz, the performance features groups walking towards each other without ever arriving to the “Others.” Over the loudspeakers, cut-up, disjointed, defamiliarized scraps of material are played to create a superordinate space of the in-between, and enable an experience of blending and simultaneity of past and present - Austria’s past is present.

With the support of the Cultural Department of the City of Vienna - MA7 and SHIFT III - Basis Kultur Wien

#RULEDBYTHEPEOPLE?

Photo project in public space by God’s Entertainment, Peter Mayr & Karl Wratschko

SYNOPSIS:

“History has shown that [...] even ostensible utopias can be realized.” (Amalie Seidel, Member of the National Council 1919-1934)

In 1919, after a long struggle, women in Austria were allowed to vote in elections for the first time. Since then, universal suffrage has seemingly been established for all. Everyone is allowed to vote from a certain age and have a say in Austria’s political developments. However, a glance at the statistics shows that — 100 years after the introduction of women’s suffrage — a large group of people are still excluded from political participation in Austria. No passport, no participation. In Vienna in 2019, this amounts to just about 30% of the people with their primary residence in the city, people who pay their taxes here and are only entitled to vote in local elections.

Is it really democratic if almost 30% of the citizens of Vienna are not allowed to vote in state and federal elections? Does citizenship have to be linked to political participation?

In the project, 52 people who have had their primary residence in Vienna for years and are still not allowed to vote were portrayed. The portraits thus stand for those citizens who do not have the right to vote. On average, the portrayed people have lived in Vienna for 12 years. They belong to more than twenty different nationalities, with one thing in common: Vienna has been the center of their life for years and they want to help shape their surroundings politically. 100 years after the introduction of women’s suffrage, the question arises once again: Do we want a society with “second-class citizens” who, with the exception of many obligations, have hardly any political rights? How can the utopia of democracy for all become a reality?

With the support of the Cultural Department of the City of Vienna - MA7 and SHIFT III - Basis Kultur Wien

                                   Photo: Peter Mayr