The Shores of Austria

The latest display collection of the Austrian Museum of Folk Life and Folk Art

Science Communications Research

In 2015, (refugee)history was written along Europe’s external and internal borders. During this year’s WIENWOCHE, this history becomes a part of the permanent exhibition at the Austrian Museum of Folk Life and Folk Art.

¡Hola Banana! is printed on a brown cardboard box – inside it is children’s clothing sized 80 to 86. A transit relic of refugees in Austria in the year 2015. In the course of WIENWOCHE, this story becomes a fixed part of the exhibit at the Austrian Museum of Folk Life and Folk Art.

Revised permanent exhibitions are currently a must in Europe’s ethnological museums. In the museum in Vienna’s Laudongasse, a group of external curators – all currently undergoing the asylum process – have not only updated the existing collection but also incorporated a new collection of objects. Right next to traditional wardrobes from Tyrolean farmhouses, packed travel bags that had to be left behind while crossing the Mediterranean become relevant artefacts of Austrian cultural anthropology. The new exhibits bear witness to how Europe and Austria function at the beginning of the 21st century.

A broken life jacket as a museum piece? To a large extent, collection objects of ethnology are “genuinely worthless”, the curatorial team explains. “An object gets its collectible value only through interpretation and contextualisation.” Perhaps these collection pieces found on the coasts of Europe will be the ones that bring museums their desired European identity. For where governments and border patrols want to batten down the hatches, Europe has such clear contours as nowhere else.

Collegium Irregulare is a fellowship programme for highly qualified asylum seekers hosted by the artistic/science platform Communications Research. The first fellowships were realised as part of the project ‘Museum on the Run’ at the Austrian Museum of Folk Life and Folk Art in Vienna. During the process, a collection of ephemeral objects related to fleeing was established which raise questions concerning 21st-century ethnology.

The curator collective of Collegium Irregulare is composed of the fellows YARDEN THERE (architect, Syria), NEGIN REZAIE (artist, Iran), RAMIN SIAWASH (journalist, Afghanistan), SAMA YASEEN (human rights activist, Irk), and REZA ZOBEIDI (journalist, Iran) as well as Vienna-based curators Alexander Martos and Niko Wahl.

With the support of the curators and mediators of the Austrian Museum of Folk Life and Folk Art in Vienna.

Event languages: German, English

Photo credits key visual: Photo: Julia Gaisbacher, Photo editing: Christoph Höbart / dform

Info on the project at the Austrian Museum of Folk Life and Folk Art ...