Living room - Rosa, Karlsplatz
public intervention and exhibition in Vienna (A)
June 2004

Living room - Rosa, Karlsplatz is based on conversations with an elderly woman who was made homeless at the age of 60. 2 years we've met regularly - first at her old "living room" - the Karlsplatz - and later at her new one in an appartment where she started to live at the age of 82.


Living room – Rosa
Out of our conversations I decided to choose the statement:
‘It (the Karlsplatz) isn’t either anymore what it has been once’
(“Der (Karlsplatz) is a nimma des woas er moa woar.”)
and to combine it with text:
Rosa, 86;
For 20 years the Karlsplatz was her ‘living room’
(20 Jahre war der Karlsplatz ihr “Wohnzimma”);
5000 other livingrooms in Vienna
(5000 andere Wohnzimmer in Wien)
and a photo that I took in Rosa’s appartment.


Living room – Karlsplatz shows the spot where she used to live at the Karlsplatz.

 

Livingrooms - Rosa was presented in quartier 21. At the same time Livingrooms - Karlsplatz was shown at the Karlsplatz, postcards of both were distributed among coffeehouses in Vienna and a combination of both photos (only with the text: 5000 other livingrooms in Vienna) was published in the streetnewspaper Augustin.