Media

Orte der Erinnerung/The Vienna Project design departs from both traditional memorials and the counter-memorial movement.  Resisting ideas about permanence and endurance as the codified response to genocide, the memorial honors the organic nature of memory as a fleeting and variable entity.  Existing in the public realm, the memorial will invite user-input, publishing photographs, videos and podcasts on the project’s web site, and streaming video into Vienna’s U-bahn info screens.

An independent documentary film about the Orte der Erinnerung/The Vienna Project memorial is currently under discussion. The following text provides a template for the film.

Purpose

Documentation in the form of film, video and photography becomes a viable means of sustaining ephemeral work, creating the evidence of its existence.   Documenting the Orte der Erinnerung/The Vienna Project provokes a number of pertinent questions that inform the film’s rationale:

Why should we revisit and remember the past? How does memory contribute to social consciousness and activate ideas about social responsibility? How does art, specifically the unique design of Orte der Erinnerung/The Vienna Project, provide a particularly potent and inclusive encounter with memory?  How does a documentary film of the project further the discursive aspirations of this time-based memorial?

Documentation of the memorial will inspire audiences to ask questions and reflect upon the meaning of memory.  A film will pose fresh questions about the viability of memorials to address a mix of contemporary issues, such as: demographically divided communities, persistence of Xenophobia and histories of hate and indifference.

Content

Filming will document the complex process of planning and implementing the memorial project. The project filmmakers will be cognizant of including multiple points of view, particularly from minority groups who continue to occupy a marginalized space within mainstream Austrian culture. Designed as a “hybrid” performance with multiple centers, the structure of the film will reflect these discreet elements. The  film will include components from the following list: 1) Footage of planning meetings; 2) Documentation of the different sites to include seven buildings and 38 addresses; 3) Laser projections; 4) Educational workshops; 5) International symposia; 6) Interviews of members of the different victim groups; 7) Interviews of the public response to the memorial; 8) Historic opening ceremony; 9) Interviews with the project team; 10) spraying the final tag.

Developed as a montage, the timeline of the project creates a structural arc, delineated by a series of interviews. The interviews will highlight a number of vantage points regarding the history of National Socialism in Austria and be used as a repetitive element to provide organizational coherence to the documentary. The film will represent a complex matrix of Holocaust memory, reconfigured for what is now being called “the post-memorial era.”