Tranzit/ERSTE Foundation Artist in Residence at Q21/Museum Quartier in Vienna (MQ AiR)
Nov 2 – Dec 24, 2021 (scroll for video presentation)
I’ve explored Vienna in relation to my hometown Timisoara, one of the eight towns in Europe dubbed “Little Vienna” during the Austro-Hungarian empire. During my artistic research at the tranzit/ERSTE residency at the Q21/MuseumsQuartier I’ve kept in mind several questions: Is the “Little Vienna” myth an unproblematized legacy, a local infatuation or city branding? Did the imperial identity include Timisoara/Banat? Was there an ethnographic campaign in Timisoara/Banat? How is imperial multiculturalism promoted inside the empire? How are the Roma/Sinti and the Romanian minorities mentioned? What is missing from this image? To what extent is it all still relevant today? and so on.
These questions filtered my reading of the exhibitions available at the Naturhistorische and Kunsthistorisches Museums, Welt Museum, and especially Volkskundemuseum, as might be expected. However, I’ve also noticed the empire mentioned in almost all contemporary art exhibitions I saw, especially at the solo shows of Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński, Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic* and Ines Doujak at Kunsthalle Wien, a sign that the subject is still relevant today. The research really opened up with the online conference Reimagining One’s Own. Ethnographic Photography in Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century Europe by the Volkskundemuseum and Photoinstitut Bonartes, which gave me a more nuanced reading into the subject, even more-so after visiting the museum’s archive. Near the end of the residency I’ve held a zoom presentation of the ongoing research, using a selection of relevant images, especially from the online archive of Wien Museum. There are no clear and definitive answers to the questions above, and more questions were added as the research proceeded.
Besides the research I tried to get a better understanding of the city and its surroundings – a special trip I took was at the Klein Wien village, at approx. 80 km from Vienna, where a photo was taken of me holding a “Timisoara” sign to complete the official sign.
The main difficulties of my nov-dec residency were the month-long lockdown and my lack of knowledge of the German language. However, I had a lot of help from researchers, architects, artists and curators, local and otherwise, from the organizations supporting this residency and Rumänisches Kulturinstitut Wien. This research will continue in my home town and hopefully in other regions of the empire.
