The Chimneys on the Adriatic, The Second Act | Ana Adamović, Zsuzsi Flohr

How do we make art today; with whom and for whom? How do we envision revolution today? May the rethinking of the first set of questions help us in tackling the second one? 

All these questions are initiated by The Chimneys on the Adriatic, an opera written by the composer Ivo Tijardovic. Back in 1949 the opera was deemed as a failure, while provoking heated discussion among Tijardovic's colleagues about its artistic quality. Even though written about and for the "ordinary" people, their voices stayed excluded from the 1949 debate. In 2023 we began developing a new piece with The Chimneys as its starting point. While rethinking the debate Tijardović’s piece initiated along with art's capacity to participate in social transformation we now turned to those whose voices stayed unheard in the 1949 debate making them our active collaborators in the process of developing an artwork that should voice our concerns, needs, ideas, or desires. 

The presentation showcases segments of that process. 

about the project

Reenacting Revolution

Institute for Art Theory and Cultural Studies |FWF PEEK (AR763)

07/2023–12/2026

Ana Adamović 

Zsuzsi Flohr

Investigating revolution as an ongoing process of dialogues and collaborations, the research brings into the present practices from the Yugoslav socialist past that once aimed at radical democratization of artistic production and consumption and employs them as blueprints for enacting new platforms for negotiating and imagining new collectivities and relations. Starting from a very specific case of The Chimneys on the Adriatic, an opera written in 1949 by Ivo Tijardović as the only Yugoslav opera dedicated to the people's liberation struggle and proletarian revolution, as well as from the discussion opera's staging had provoked, the research is conceived as one possible proposition in rethinking art's capacity and limits to actively participate in an imagined social transformation. While involving numerous participants in a series of reenactments, the research is investigating the ways in broadening the pool of those whom art is addressing or aiming to involve in the art practice, of the modalities of that involvement, as well as of the artist's positions and roles in those processes.

Weblink
https://reenactingrevolution.net

Project partners

Tanja Petrović and Anja Đorđević

Results of the project City Walk of Viena Latina | Carla Bobadilla

Viena Latina is a participatory project that explores migration memory in Europe. Employing oral history, participatory methods from the social sciences and the arts, as well as innovative dissemination strategies, it aims to build a platform for the post-migratory experience of Latin Americans in Vienna, Austria's capital. Almost one and a half years after the project began, Carla Bobadilla will present some of the outcomes of her work on Viena Latina City Walks. Together with a group of fourteen citizen scientists, she analysed seventy geographical interviews to identify the most important locations in the city for the community. Following different methodological introductions, the group designed three routes around the city, highlighting places of work, empowerment, cultural identity and discrimination. The city walks took place between August and October this year. Topics that came up during the city walks and that we want to reflect on include belonging, reactivation of cultural identification, being in love with the city, political interventions, cooking with friends and dancing together.

about the project

Viena Latina. Articulating Latin American migration memory in a European capital

Institute for Education in the Arts |EU CERV European Rememberance

07/2024–06/2026

Carla Bobadilla

Viena Latina is a project that uses oral history, social sciences and the arts to record and share the experiences of Latin Americans who have moved to Vienna. By collecting and reflecting on these experiences, Viena Latina will create a dynamic archive that will grow and interact with other segments of Viennese society. This will empower communities to share the Latin American and Caribbean migratory experience in Vienna.

The project looks at a key dimension of postcolonial Europe: its multicultural societies rooted in both European imperialism and authoritarian regimes in the Global South. With its focus on participation, articulation and mnemonic empowerment, and with a team of experienced experts and Citizen Scientists, the community-based project will investigate this history and build spaces for communication and self-representation in the city.

Weblink
https://www.vienalatina.org 

Project partners

Österreichisches Lateinamerika-Institut

Wien Museum

Investigating Far-Right Fashion: Ethnographic Perspectives from the Field | Sarah Held, Teresa Fischer

The presentation outlines the research project by focusing closely on our international fieldwork on fashion and the far right. The empirical research comprises extensive field observations, in-depth interviews, and conversations with far-right actors, including brand and label owners, customers, clerks, and participants in far-right networks within a transatlantic context. We report from the front lines of our research, sharing experiences and reflections drawn from direct engagement in the field. To illustrate our findings and to make the mechanisms of vestimental violence tangible, we will present selected objects and visual materials collected during the fieldwork.

about the project

Fashion and the Far-Right. The New Complexity in Style

Institute for Education in the Arts |FWF Principal Investigator Project (P37004)

10/2023–09/2026

Elke Gaugele

Sarah Held

Sophie Uitz, Teresa Fischer, Bettina Wöss, Anna Berthold 

This in-depth fashion studies research investigates the current role of fashion for the far right in Europe and the US. Since the millennium, on both sides of the Atlantic, an international far right has appropriated the "language of fashion" (Barthes) for its strategic purposes. In the course of this, according to our diagnosis of the times, fashion has been weaponized. Fashion plays an essential role in forming and expanding national, transnational, and transatlantic networks of the far right. Contemporary far-right fashion aesthetics are characterized by polysemy and opaqueness, termed here, a "new complexity in style".

Starting from case studies on far-right German/Austrian fashion brands and U.S. labels, the researchers aim to identify this "new complexity in style" and the role fashion plays in the transnational increase of far-right ideologies, violence, and affects. How are power, cultural violence, aggression, and hate created through far-right fashion? What role do categories of gender, sex, race, body, ability, and class play in this process? Which political and economic networks can be identified through far-right fashion? Which signs and symbols can be discovered?

Weblink
https://neofashfarright.akbild.ac.at

https://www.instagram.com/neofash_research/

Project partners

Advisory Board: Cynthia Miller Idriss, Katrine Fangen, Emanuele Toscano, Gabi Rohmann, Simon Strick, Hilary Pilkington