Opera in 5 acts, Vienna Festival 2012

Food performance, olfactory stage design, WUK Vienna

Fried sardines, beer, cigarette smoke, pinch of salt

The Guest Worker Opera is a building site. On this site, we are the foremen and apprentices of taste. Piece by piece, we build and piece it together. A botched job, of course. It’ll do, it’ll hold. “nema problema” or “ima problema” (Viennese building site Esperanto for: there are problems – there are no problems)? The template (an entire country: Yugoslavia) and the subjects (the migrant workers) have slipped through our fingers. We’ve also lost track of around 100 Yugoslav workers’ clubs in Vienna. In a community where the future had already taken place, God was dead, and the amens and omens of fraternal unity were spoken, we are archaeologists, unearthing sediments. Back then, the clubs were in the cellars. Now we’ve reached the ground floor, ascended to the ‘Jugoeckkaffeehaus’. To the BOEM. Peripheral. Democratic, and often ethnically unambiguous too. Apparently, socialism created the apolitical worker. Without knowing the language, one can still build the best car in Europe and clean all the museums. One can also come to the corner café with dirty hands. Nobody stays clean there. I’d rather die and be buried here. That’s what the waitress says. The war has shattered us. The most beautiful shards are in Vienna. Around the BOEM we piece them together into a dazzling mosaic. The mosaic, the fragments of what is broken, whatever we find: we exhibit it at the WUK. In the form of our opera. None of us has ever been to the opera. Nothing happens there. Here it does.

In 5 acts we offer a glimpse into the search. We assess the shards. Some are so sharp that we transfer them to another medium. It’s a good thing our gloves aren’t made of velvet. Work gloves served as our cultural cloaks: no one saw us. Yet when we look at ourselves, we realise we are no longer invisible. Others have taken our roles. We leave the ground floor.

Opera in 5 acts, Vienna Festival 2012

Food performance, olfactory stage design, WUK Vienna

Fried sardines, beer, cigarette smoke, pinch of salt

The Guest Worker Opera is a building site. On this site, we are the foremen and apprentices of taste. Piece by piece, we build and piece it together. A botched job, of course. It’ll do, it’ll hold. “nema problema” or “ima problema” (Viennese building site Esperanto for: there are problems – there are no problems)? The template (an entire country: Yugoslavia) and the subjects (the migrant workers) have slipped through our fingers. We’ve also lost track of around 100 Yugoslav workers’ clubs in Vienna. In a community where the future had already taken place, God was dead, and the amens and omens of fraternal unity were spoken, we are archaeologists, unearthing sediments. Back then, the clubs were in the cellars. Now we’ve reached the ground floor, ascended to the ‘Jugoeckkaffeehaus’. To the BOEM. Peripheral. Democratic, and often ethnically unambiguous too. Apparently, socialism created the apolitical worker. Without knowing the language, one can still build the best car in Europe and clean all the museums. One can also come to the corner café with dirty hands. Nobody stays clean there. I’d rather die and be buried here. That’s what the waitress says. The war has shattered us. The most beautiful shards are in Vienna. Around the BOEM we piece them together into a dazzling mosaic. The mosaic, the fragments of what is broken, whatever we find: we exhibit it at the WUK. In the form of our opera. None of us has ever been to the opera. Nothing happens there. Here it does.

In 5 acts we offer a glimpse into the search. We assess the shards. Some are so sharp that we transfer them to another medium. It’s a good thing our gloves aren’t made of velvet. Work gloves served as our cultural cloaks: no one saw us. Yet when we look at ourselves, we realise we are no longer invisible. Others have taken our roles. We leave the ground floor.