MEMORY AGAINST HISTORY: RETURN OF THE REPRESSED
‘This used to be a Jewish city, and it’s hard to wander its lovely boulevards without pondering what’s been lost. ….Vienna remains a city of dark doorways and guilty secrets, and for me that’s central to its seductive, queasy charm.’
– W. Cook 2015, Vienna is a crossroads of the world again – but something’s missing
Vienna is a city with a rich history, once the centre of the Austria-Hungarian empire, before the outbreak of World War Two the city was a melting pot of culture, races and progressive ideas.
In this project I focus on the urban fabric of the city, how the forms, materials and routes are undeniably interlinked with the people of the city both past and present. Vienna was once the home of Sigmund Freud father of psychoanalysis, there is no doubt as to why he created his theories on repression within this city. Throughout my project I have attempted to use ideas and theories of psychoanalysis, with a heavy focus on modern psychoanalysis, to explain the source of the problems within Vienna and to help the Viennese deal with their damaged psyche.
To begin to look at the history of Vienna, I will start with the Ringstrasse development. As the heart of a great and wealthy empire Vienna had the privilege of power and money, it was recognised that the risk to the capital was no longer from external invading forces but instead from internal civil unrest and a rebellion of the people. It was decided that the old Glacis, a firing safe zone around the inner Stadt city walls, would become a cultural ring encircling the city. The Ringstrasse was constructed between the 1860’s and 1890’s, and although initially a success the inherent failures of this urban project are quite apparent today. As I will discuss later, this ring that strangles the city is the focus of the Viennese false self, it is this ring of ‘culture’ that is perpetually presented to the outside world and is one of the symptoms of the damaged Viennese psyche.
Through the 19th and early 20th century the city grew, and the unique situation within Vienna gave birth to the likes of Freud, Loos, Wittgenstein, Klimt, Schiele, Beethoven, Schoenberg and many others. This city and its inhabitants were at the forefront of modernist thinking in both the arts and sciences, and was set to continue this path of enlightenment right up until the Anschluss (12th March 1938), when the population of Vienna voted for the political powers of Nazi Germany. This date marks the death of Viennese culture as the actions that followed tore deep scars in the fabric and psyche of Vienna.
A great deal of the project focused on the three pairs of giant Flaktürmes. Built by the Nazi occupation protect the city they still stand to this day. As the most physical representation of the Nazi occupation within the city it seems strange how unnoticed they go within the psyche of the city, you will not find them on any tourist maps nor are they adorned with any information boards explaining to the public what they are. It is truly bizarre how silent these concrete giants are. They now stand as clear representations of repression within the city, and due to this they featured heavily in my designs throughout the project.
Loos writes that cultural evolution is held back by the members of society that are cognitively living in past decades and centuries, as living in the past and to require the ‘ornament’ of the past is akin to wasting time and resources on the unnecessary. Loos writes this in 1908 and makes strong references to his home of Vienna. 100 years and two world wars later the sentiment still rings true, however unlike 1908 where the culture of Vienna had merely slowed its pace of progression, now in 2017 following the atrocities that lead to the death of Viennese culture in 1938 we are presented with a Vienna that clutches to the corpse of its past culture, all the while any hopes of a new culture developing in Vienna is repressed to live behind closed twilight doors. Vienna the City of Dreams, Vienna the City of Music, or so they would have us believe.
9th-10th November 1938 - Kristallnacht
Eight months after the Anschluss, the Nazi Party Paramilitary group acted upon orders to clear out the Jewish population of Nazi controlled land. Vienna was hit badly, having always had a large Jewish population the devastation within the city was vast. In one night thirty thousand Jewish people, amounting to almost half of the Jewish population, were arrested and sent to camps outside the city. Countless businesses were destroyed, and all the city’s Synagogues were burnt to the ground (except one that is still standing that was built into a housing development that inhabited non-Jews). The acts carried out on this night were not carried out by the Nazi party alone, once the atrocities began members of the public began to join in, acting on their own free will to remove the Jewish from Vienna. This night is commonly viewed as the start of ‘The Final Solution’ and set in motion the acts that eventually led to the deaths of millions of Jews at the hands of the Nazi party.
Using this map, I document where the main areas showing symptoms of a damage psyche are within the city. Three pairs of Flaktürmes to the north, the south east and the south west, represent the repression within the city. To the north east we have the new housing developments and Donau City being used as distraction techniques. Acting as a constrictive barrier to the inner Stadt we have the false self, the Potemkin façade showing itself as the Ringstrasse. However now with the symptoms worked out and documented I need to address the missing within Vienna, the murdered Jewish population. For this I looked back to the atrocities that occurred during the Kristallnacht, and looked to Bollas’ Architecture and the Unconscious for inspiration, in this passage he talks about the lost spirits of industries within our cities;
On that November night the skies were red and the air thick with the burning synagogues, centres of the cultural world for the previous Jewish inhabitants in this city. It is in these locations the people originally kept their spirits and it is in these locations a great culture was murdered. On the map opposite the locations of lost synagogues are highlighted with red circles, these locations, in addition to the Flaktürmes, are where I will site my interventions.
My proposal is that the psyche of Vienna has indeed repressed this memory of its history, and is seen most clearly at the Monument against war and fascism (1988) by artist Alfred Hrdlicka. Stuck awkwardly on a bomb site, an insignificant bronze sculpture appears. Depicting a Jewish man undertaking an act of forced humiliation he is down on all fours scrubbing the filth from the streets. This sculpture essentially failed, due to a lack of scale and perhaps conviction from the artist and council, as when first constructed people used the insignificant bronze statue as a seat, later causing the addition of a crown of thorns upon the sculpture’s back.
When first constructed people used the memorial as a seat. As a deterrent the thorn were added later upon the sculpture’s back.
This is a failed memorial. A lack of public adjacency and a clear inability to teach future generation of the atrocities that where afflicted upon the Jewish population of Vienna.
DARK VIENNA (2017)
Music by John Zorn – The Big Gundown
Installation created by:
Eleanor Gair
Harry Thompson
Rachel Earnshaw
Sarah Rogers
Tom Goodby
Tove Ekström
Yasmin Kelly
Joshua Higginbottom
Utopian consciousness means a consciousness for which the possibility that people no longer have to die does not have anything horrible about it, but is, on the contrary, that which one actually wants’
(T.Adorno)
In 1938 Vienna committed suicide.
The ensuing world war tore Vienna apart and left scars irreparably deep in the culture, population and psyche of the city.
Today, the scar of fascism runs deep in the visual language of the city, meanwhile Vienna attempts to write its legacy in the pages of history as the first victim of the war.
The crystallization of this ideology is most clearly seen in the abandoned Flaktürmes protectively circling the Ringstrasse. As the legacy of Nazi occupation, they are defensively buried by the damaged psyche of Vienna. But as the problems of the city are continuously repressed (S.Freud) the warnings of history go unheeded and barbarism threatens a dramatic return.
Without a thorough assessment, the city will not heal from the trauma of war. Although much of the society operates behind closed doors, at night we glimpse the true city behind the Potemkin façade. Ultimately, Vienna comes alive when the light of day fades, offering us hope that cultural salvation is still possible.
Dark Vienna explores a Freudian approach; asking questions of Vienna to allow for a free associative symposium. Emancipated from its cycle of denial, the city will be able to progress towards an environmental and architectural authenticity. Our challenge is to accept that ‘architecture arouses moods in people, so the task of the architect is to give these moods concrete expression’ (A.Loos).
‘A liberated humanity would be able to inherit its historical legacy free of guilt…..aesthetic truth content and history are that deeply meshed’
(‘Black as an Ideal’ in ‘Aesthetic Theory’. T.Adorno)
INTERVENTION
This area contains the highest density of lost Synagogues due to the fact that this location pre-1938 had a higher concentration of Jewish families. Also the area is deeply rooted in the Jewish history of the city. Here the Jewish population were removed from their homes, rounded up like livestock and transported, via trains just to the north, to camps far from the city. Finally, by locating the intervention away from the city centre it helps to ensure that this does not become another spectacle within the city, this intervention is for the people (past and present) of Vienna, not the international stage.
With the main site surrounding the Flak tower, threads than cut through the landscape of the city create a physical link between the Central hub and the synagogue locations. These Steel threads are a physical cut into the roads in this area, causing a physical disruption as well as a visual cue of where to go to find the interventions.
Locations of past synagogues then become places of installation. Following historical research into each site, my installation reforms the walls of the old building so that the routes of ritual might be stepped once again.
In addition each installation has at its centre an interactive heart. Following psychoanalytical concepts of transference and counter-transference. I wanted to make a space where the transference from patient to building responds with a counter-transference from building to patient.
Art finds itself the unconscious organisation of the outside world. Using a ‘play space’ Phantasy allows for adaptation to the world.
To use Adrian stokes as an example, an up and coming philosophical writer who in 1929 was well praised and then in 1930 became paralysed by his own inner torment. He underwent psychoanalysis treatment with Melanie Klein. 5 years of treatment allowed for a lot of personal growth in Stokes after which he published Carving Aesthetic. His quote above raises an interesting idea. I set out to create something that could be touched and where that touch could allow for the reveal of an unconscious form.
At the heart of each intervention lies an alterable structure. Huge panels of rusted steel, vibrant in colour in comparison the dead walls, lie on tracks and encourage the users to manipulate them. Panels are too large to be moved alone, through constructive social interaction the users can change the landscape of the space. Creating, via their initial transference, an unconscious flow within the space. The Counter-transference comes in the form of the sounds of these panels shifting and screeching into place, the red residue left on the hands, the patina left on the panels and most importantly the creation of unique views within this space that, due to the nature of this being a public urban site, will never be the same twice.
LEOPOLDSTÄDTER TEMPLE
PAZIMANTEN TEMPLE
TÜRKISCHER TEMPLE
