"Was ist deine Story" is an open group of artists and young people from the 16th District of Vienna. This working group will meet 4 times and on the last date the outcome will be exhibited. During the workshop, we aim to break with stereotypes, to develop technical skills, and to appropiate the "public space" of the neighborhood. The workshop will take place in the frame of Soho in Ottakring. The first meeting will be on 22.5. We will work together on the 24.5 and 25.5. The 26.5. there will be an exhibition and a small party.


WORKSHOP PROGRAM

22.05 14:00 @ Ragnarhof
Presenting the concept and the different possible forms of expression, the techniques and ways in which we can assist. We present the question "how my story relates to the intervention I do? How to experience space as somebody that has something to say?".

24.05 14:00 @ Semperdepot
Putting ideas into form, starting from the questions: how my story relates to the intervention I do? How to experience space as somebody that has something to say?

25.05 14:00 @ Semperdepot
Technical consultations Providing possible tools. How to use specific programs, techniques or machines — whether it is via programs like photoshop, illustrator, indesign or through photography, drawings, silkscreen, etc.? How to integrate recycled material in the intervention? Costs endured are to be reimbursed through receipts.

26.05 14:00 @ Exhibition place
Presentation of final works. Small street party/gathering.

Ragnarhof: Grundsteingasse 12, 1160
Semperdepot: Lehargasse 6, 1060



WHO CAN TAKE PART?

Everyone who is interested.


WHAT IS THE IDEA BEHIND THE WORKSHOP?

The workshop aims to reflect on the narratives which are displayed in the public space, and to intervene in them via the provision of skills and knowledge in graphic computer programs, and the planning and development of the participants in their own projects.


TELL ME MORE!

The idea is to open possibilities for independent conceptual production and technical concretion of future projects. It will involve the deconstruction of the notion of “the single story”, hidden knowledges, and its formal representation. The forms of expression will be discussed and decided within the working group and will be shifting between an intervention in public space and/or a final artistic product. Ideas into form — from the concept of “the single story” the aim is to reach an understanding of what the danger of hegemonic story telling is and what is the importance of finding out the strength of one’s story and its relevance for one’s own self understanding. Forms of expressions — practical skills in transforming ideas into images. The focus will be as well on the process of creating, through the use of low cost materials and tools available in our surroundings with the aim to open possibilities for future autonomous and independent projects. Public and semi-public spaces — What are the stories public spaces tell? To whom and how? How relevant are these stories to us? In the workshop the dialog between the public and the public spaces will be encouraged. What subtle or hidden knowledges can be woven into? How can one intervene?


WHAT IS THIS "SINGLE HISTORY"?


The art world is a privileged sphere and it is largely comprised of those few who can afford to belong to it. Regardless of the initiatives of individual institutions, the racist structural reality that students have to cope with is still very limiting. This is because artistic practices occur in a very elitist space, in which not everyone can enter, or even imagine acting there. Access to education is today as in the past, determined by social and economic background. These structural conditions exclude large population groups that are then deprived of having a position in the artistic production of the society they live in.

This exclusion limits possibilities and facilitates what Chimamanda Adichie, a Nigerian novelist, calls the danger of the single story. The idea of people having "single stories" (as opposed to plural) dispossess people of their humanity, spread half-truths, and mark arbitrary divisions. Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive story of that person.” In her perspective “Stories matter. Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign. But stories can also be used to empower, and to humanize.” This project wants to fight the exclusionary mechanisms of the art field in neoliberal capitalism, and to engage in a process of physical, practical, social resistance that provides potentiality for an alternative sociability.


WHY IN PUBLIC SPACE?

Public space is build upon the dominant public discourse. Interacting with the public space, streets and squares, allows for the appropriation of the space one is living in. Social exclusion and the constructions of local identities happen also through a regulation of who is allowed to change the city fabric and who is not. In fact this physical fabric of the city has as well many stories to tell. But most of them are not part of the dominant single story of how urban space in Vienna should or could look like.

Proposing an spatial intervention in the workshop means to expand that story with untold ones and to encourage and empower the participants to see their story as a valuable and integral part of the whole. It has the possibility to break up the status quo -that is upheld as the neutral single story- beyond the sphere of those who initiate the action onto every single passerby. Thus communication and interaction with passersby should be integrated in the decis- ions of formal configuration and the duration of the intervention. In these spaces of encounter a world of clandestine, subaltern, dispersed, and hidden knowledges remains invisible to power. To work outside of the borders of the academia implies the establishment of a positive connection with the production of a body of practical knowledges of counter power. It also implies the possibility of autonomy and of speaking about the complexity of counter stories.


WHO ARE YOU?

We are a group of artists with different backgrounds.

Sheri Avraham, born in Beit Dagan, studied Psychology at the Open University in Israel and is currently studying art at the Department for Post-Conceptual Art Practices at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Her practice lies between visual art and cultural work, dealing with institutional and normalized racism, emancipatory education and pushing forms of counter hegemonic history writing.

Imayna Caceres is a migrant, art student, sociology graduated and activist who is interested in open spaces for articulated action from which things can be rethought, disturbed and ultimately transformed.

Johannes Puchleitner currently studies Architecture at the Technical University in Vienna. In 2010 he joined the viennese group of INURA, an international network of urban research and action, to work and progress on the field of urban science.

Konrad Wolf studied Political Science and Architecture in Vienna and is currently studying the MA program in Critical Studies at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. After working in architectural offices and projects in Berlin, Rome and Vienna his current focus lies in a wider understanding of spatial practices and theory.