Der Podcast "Erinnerungsorte bauen / Kollektive konstruieren" von Contemporary Matters ist im kollektiven Schreibprozess als Audio-Begleitung für einen Spaziergang zu den Billboards der Arbeit "und wir mittendrin" entstanden.

Collaboration between Contemporary Matters and Olena Newkryta

230 cm x 504 cm, Title: Jelinek Elfriede, Wolken.Heim.,1990., grafical support: Maria Kanzler

Podcast: Contemporary Matters

FRIEDMANNGASSE 1C / ARGENTINIERSTRAßE 32 / VOTIVKIRCHE‘

‘We’ is a complicated word. In fact, I find it to be perhaps the most beautiful and the cruelest word in the language simultaneously. It’s inclusive and exclusive – the balance depends on the language surrounding it and on the perspective adopted. Every time this word is uttered or written, it inscribes politics on its surroundings. Even with the simplest translation, it represents a line, where some people are inside and others stand outside. With each use, who ‘we’ are hinges on the choice of language.

Anna Kaisa Rastenberger

und wir mittendrin. wir sind hier. wir sind bei uns. is a conceptual text work which will be presented as a poster in public space. The text consists of sentences containing the pronoun WE, which were found on advertising surfaces, banners, posters in Vienna - mostly at construction areas. The corporate language of the collected slogans testifies to expectations, affirmations and identification possibilities. With regard to urban space, construction processes and property relations the work puts into question: Who is creating space? Who is in charge of inclusion and exclusion mechanisms? Who owns and who distributes space? The historical reference to Austrian migration history of „Gastarbeiter“ („guest-workers“) is just as important as the examination of who is part of the WE. WE demands construction. Considering the semantic but also political complexity and ambiguity of the pronoun WE, the textual work was constructed out of slogans mostly found at construction sites. Here, the collected words are functioning as kind of modules, which are being shifted, displaced, repeated - thus, trying to grasp the body of the WE which is building spaces, creating values, shaping future…

"und wir mittendrin. wir sind hier. wir sind bei uns" by Olena Newkryta