Opening of Wenn wir da sind,
Freizeichen in Mürzzuschlag, 17. 10. 2008

The project Wenn wir da sind (When we are here) is a piece in public space consisting of three parts, each adressing another audience and with another time-perspective.
The project is based on a workshop in summer 2008 with the users of a youth club in the small alpine industrial town Mürzzuschlag. With a camera team Katharina Lampert and I followed the teenagers through the town, filming them by doing what they do - hanging out with friends, scating, chatting, taking up spaces in the town and defining these for them selves.
The recordings were edited into a short film. The film maps the town from the kids perspective, and show the way they use it, how they continuesly perform in the public space of the town, on ephmeral self defined sites. The film was shown at the opening of the project, and each participant was given a copy. In front of the youth club a series of poster were installed, based on the recordings for the film. When they are taken down after some months, the posterboards will be used by the club.
The most permanent part of the project is a series of wall drawings made in a tunnel near the center of the town, in the form a reverse grafitti; by erasing dirt from the walls of the tunnel, a shadow drawing becomes visible. As ephemeral as the spaces used by each generation of teenagers in the town. In February 2009 the film was the installed with new wall drawings in the exhibition Fake ot Feint, Berlin, and with the addition of the film Die Schlacht.


Video (HD) 14 min
Katharina Lampert and Sofie Thorsen

Wall Piece (inverse grafitti) and poster series
Sofie Thorsen


www.freizeichen.mur.at
www.fakeorfeint.org