Demonstrate!
Ever since the FPÖ joined
the coalition government, people have been gathering at Ballhausplatz in
Vienna every Thursday and proceeding along various routes through the city
in demonstrations against this government.
The government and some
favoring media try to neglect the reasons for these demonstrations, contributing
to a defamation and demonisation of the participants. A very impressive
example of various media reports was the headline on the cover of the Austrian
newspaper with the highest circulation (Kronenzeitung) on July 13, 2000:
”Every Thursday, hooligans march through Vienna: The demonstrations already
cost us 82 millions.”
Seven months later, on February
22, 2001, during the Thursday demonstration on the occasion of the annual
and very traditional, internationally frequented ball in the Viennese state
opera, it became clear how Media coverage and the police’s use of violence
can go together. The participants of the demonstration wanted to demonstrate
against the government in front of the state opera and met an enormously
big police force. If the police’s goal for the Thursday demonstrations
has hitherto been to keep everything under control, to observe the participants
and to consciously direct the protest, this time the situation was different.
Several memory reports of
directly concerned people show that on this evening everyone could have
been attacked by police forces. Everyone who participated in this demonstration,
no matter if they were ready for violence, risked to be seriously hit with
clubs, which made it necessary to call the ambulance. Whoever had to go
to the hospital and indicated that he or she was hurt by the police, risked
to be legally prosecuted because of “resistance against the state forces.”
One reason for all this is
that mass media In Austria (especially the ”Kronen Zeitung”) regarded the
demonstration participants as criminals. Such representations helped to
establish and construct images in public of a ”leftist group ready for
violence”, or ”a group of frustrated, but mainly peaceful Thursday demonstrators
marching together with left-wing chaotic radicals”. In this context it
Is not astonishing that the Austrian newspaper ”Die Presse” commented about
the violence of this demonstration ”that this night ended with several
seriously injured people, also hurt the peaceful demonstrators.”
The project ”Demonstrate!”
tries to present a different view of the Thursday demonstrations through
collaboration with some of the participants.
A series of 26 portraits,
which was realized in the summer of 2000, approaches the phenomenon of
these demonstrations not through a depiction of the masses, but with the
intention to visualize subjective views of individuals within these demonstrations.
Thus, a look at the protest from the outside should be avoided as well
as a judgment in order to subsume everything under an ideological formula.
Some participants were asked
directly and informed about the project. They were invited to give instructions
on how they wanted to be photographically captured during the demonstration
or at the meeting point, the Ballhausplatz. The pictures could be viewed
immediately on the screen of the digital camera and then, the best picture
was chosen together. Moreover, the photographed people were invited to
give a statement on the political situation in Austria, which was instantly
recorded on Mini disc or sent afterwards.
The photo series confronts
visitors with pictures and attitudes of various people, who were also defamed
as ”leftist radicals.” The portraits show their individual characters and,
apart from mere protest, analyze the political situation as well as issues
of a new social orientation with regard to the new government.
As a supplement to these
photo and text prints, an information area informs about the police escalations
on February 22, 2001; memory reports, which were provided by eyewitnesses
for ”Demonstrate!,” showing police violence against the participants of
the demonstration. The indication of any of the authors‘ names has consciously
been left out.
One copy of the report on
this Thursday demonstration and the following house search of the Ernst-Kirchweger
house in the morning of February 23 offers information from the perspective
of the inhabitants of this house, who were turned into violent criminals.
Selected newspaper clippings make it possible to re-read how distorted
the mass media reports on the Thursday demonstrations and the house search
were. |