MONUMENTS FOR THE GOOD PEOPLE OF VOLKERTVIERTEL

Public Art Vienna, Geschichten vor Ort, 2006

Seven poetized short biographies of workers and immigrants were compiled in cooperation with the neighborhood youth and then written by hand on the facades and walls of seven locations in Vienna’s Volkertviertel district. This series of public space interventions made use of the form of wall texts and was meant to function as seven temporary memorial-sites paying tribute to ordinary people and good neighbors. Fifteen years later, four of the interventions are still in good condition.

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The life stories of workers and especially guest workers (Gastarbeiter) are an important document of the time in which we live. Many modern societies are strongly marked by migrations and labor market irregularities. In this project, seven biographies of working people, both Austrians and guest workers, are condensed into short and simple narratives. I see them as subtle artifacts able to stimulate reflection and self-reflection as well as to generate cultural and social identification and solidarity.

While the project documents the social reality of the Volkertviertel district, a relatively impoverished migrant neighborhood, it wants at the same time to influence that reality positively. It starts from the idea that every individual or social group should have the opportunity to influence the way he/she/they are perceived by members of the dominant culture. Having that in mind, compiling the life-stories of the district's residents was not enough. Rather were these stories, again in cooperation with the residents, to be prominently shown and made visible in the public space of the community. The communicative power of these texts within the community were just as important as their appearance in the public space. My wish was that the final form of the project presented in the public space be as appealing to Volkertsviertel's residents as to its visitors. The particular attraction inheres in the life stories written out, in public, on the walls of the buildings, being those of the people living right there, on the other side of those walls.

In collaboration with three local schools, six working groups were formed with two to six students ranging in age between twelve and eighteen. The schools that took part in the project included a vocational school for young people with special needs, a local high school, and an elementary school. The students were given a chance to take part in a “committee” that would search for “the good people from our neighborhood” and document their life stories. They were invited to consider, research, and suggest people whose life stories could be instructive to others. We explained to them that we wanted to pay tribute to and show respect for good ordinary people, and to set up symbolic monuments for them. We invited them to suggest persons, whether their parents or extended family, or neighbors they found interesting. Here, the intention was to connect the older population with the younger generations in the neighborhood, while on the other hand the older residents were invited to make their life stories public so as to transfer their valuable experiences to those younger.

Over a period of three weeks I worked with the students individually and in smaller groups. We visited the selected people in the neighborhood, recorded the interviews, and then the students listened to the recordings and wrote out the biographies. At the end of this collaborative work process we had seven short texts of approximately 1200 characters, seven compressed biographies of people from the neighborhood written out by their young neighbors.

It was envisaged that the collective work on the project would encourage the overall creativity of the participants and enable them to acquire new skills. In the whole of the process there was a strong focus on the educational aspect and the development of concrete knowledge (how to write a biography, what an interview is, how to ask questions). Also, the direct communication of the street wall texts served as a tool in public space that, mediated by the short biographical narratives, strongly promoted identification within the community, social cohesion, solidarity and a sense of fellowship, especially among members of different national groups.

The raising of the symbolic monuments was initiated so that the members of the local community would be able actively to participate (by preparing the walls for painting, setting up scaffolding, writing out the texts). It was originally intended that young unemployed residents would write out the texts on the street locations. However, due to a lack of organizational resources, this was not put into practice. Instead, it was students from the art academy that wrote out the seven texts on the walls of the buildings.

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CREDITS
Monuments for the Good People of Volkertviertelwas realized within the frame of the Public Art Viena’s group project Geschichte(n) vor Ort. Curatorial team: Michal Kolecek, Margarethe Makovec, Roland Schöny. Production: Martina Wäfler. Participating schools: Berufsschule Holzhausergasse, Bundesrealgymnasium Vereinsgasse, Layana Volksschule Vereingasse, Photos: Kristina Leko.

GENRE&FORMATS
Project: series of interventions in public space; participatory-documentary art project; community project; oral history; project with specific social groups. Artwork/s and artifacts: workshops; interviews, texts, text-based interventions.