Re-Inventing Vienna 2014
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This project explores the make-up, politics and essence of the Viennese in this expanding, tolerant and modern European city. The city plays an innovative and leading role in supporting and exploring ways of living together in this rapidly changing society through participatory art and interventions in public space, among other activities. In this work I search for used second-hand objects manafactured in Vienna – the detritus left behind by an informed and affluent society – in second-hand shops, markets, church-fairs and community centres. I attempt to construct a narrative, a visual story that will open up and reveal the observations of a visual artist – an outside perspective and lay bare the readings of a ‘participatory adventurer’ engaging with a dynamic, artistically endowed central European society. As a new resident in Vienna, with an introduction to Vienese art culture through my Studio at the well known dasweissehaus Art collective/Institution, I had a possibility, a window of opportunity, in my first few years, to critically explore and observe this vibrant, innovative and sought after city that has a past and present geopolitical history because of its strategic central position, in the very heart of Europe and the EU. My work is participatory in the sense that I have an ‘open studio’ policy and I invite visitors, acquaintances and the public to contribute and comment on my newly informed observations of the Viennese and their innovative ways of living together. From these dialogs, discussions and comments I go out and search for discarded objects, detritus and the like, that will represent these thoughts, which I will eventually assemble as a complete Installation and exhibit here in my studio in Vienna.   |