The Hasenleiten Revue forms part of the series of projects Fleeting Territories, which has brought us to Simmering in Vienna for a second time. The working-class, industrial district of Simmering has long provided Vienna with a field of social and urban planning experimentation – in the past, just as much as today. Barracks. Gasworks and power stations. Grain silos. Abattoirs. Vienna's Central Cemetery. The logistics and infrastructural industries. It was an area dominated by the ‘dirty grey hulk’. Today a migrants’ district. As Thomas Öhlböck notes in “Eight-and-a-half hectares that mean the world,” his dissertation on the refugee settlement of Macondo, large-scale urban industrial and housing projects are a manifestation of “the projected logic of capital.” We invited artists and residents to join us to discover the forms and the rhetoric, with which these materialities emerge on the ground.

 

The Hasenleiten Revue addressed the past and the present of a public housing estate - the Hasenleiten Siedlung in Vienna Simmering - that experienced an unbelievable series of transformations during the course of the 20th century – from a field hospital and barracks during the First World War, as emergency accommodation for the poor between the wars and as a desolate temporary quarter for dispossessed Jewish families under National Socialism, to an expanded public housing estate and, at the same time, social hotspot following the Second World War and the pleasant residential district of today, with its various social and demographic structures - from old workers communities to new migrant communities.

 

We aimed to illuminate these changes and turning points through a mix of critical reflection upon the hidden and the obvious, new and old stories by a specially created glitzy revue programme in Carsonypark in the heart of Hasenleiten. The revue format served as the methodological starting point for an invitation to residents and artists to join us for an artistic experiment.

 

A fragmented past, an uncertain past, an uncertain and indiscernible present and an unclear future provide the context of projection for which the artists and residents of Hasenleiten and its surroundings were asked to provide a contribution in place of their performance.

 

THE PROJECT HAS NEVER HAPPENED. IT WAS CANCELLED DUE TO THE LOCKDOWN IN SPRING 2020. STILL FOR US IT DID HAPPEN. WE DECIDED TO DOCUMENT OUR ENCOUNTERS, STORIES AND CONTRIBUTIONS TO COME, WITH A MAGAZINE.

 

To create a space for a range of voices, images and stories and to see what magic could emerge when these meet without any dominant foreground narrative – except for an inquisitive desire to take a colourful snapshot of the estate's diverse community, as our original intention, was still possible. We have now recorded these contributions to the revue, upon which people worked for a long time, in this magazine. Images, texts, quotes, fragments, documents, which, like a programme of numbers in a revue – a more-or-less loosely-arranged sequence of stories and performances –, establish a connection between the place, the artists and the residents.

 

The contributions are partly fictional, partly reflective and partly emotional. Some of the contributions and other material have been newly contextualised by the photographer Martin Osterider, while others have been put in context by the graphic designer Erich Bendl.

COLLABORATORS:
Jonatan Habib Engqvist, Esref, Aldo Giannotti, Michael Greimer (mojosa - Offene Kinder- und Jugendarbeit), Hakan Gürses, Gilbert Handler, Thekla Hochmayer, Petra Leban (Bezirksmuseum Simmering),  Michikazu Matsune, Gin Müller, Martin Osterider, Angelika Pfeifer (Kirchenchor Hasenleiten), Isa Rosenberger, Lotte Schreiber, Familie Schrom, Christian Teckert, Rudi Zeller

THANKS TO:

Residents of Hasenleiten in Simmering, Theatergruppe Hasenleiten, Patricia Lang (wohnpartner Hasenleiten), Beata Stram (Hasenleitenstuben), Richard Schütz (Schütz Design), 

Bezirksmuseum Simmering, Herbert Schreyl (d‘ nossn Fiass), Michaela Brandl (Basiskultur Wien), Erich Bendl (Szenario), Rupert Hebblethwaite, Michaela Alex-Eibensteiner, Renate Burger 

 

Funded by Shift Wien, Basis Kultur Wien.