Furtive, Quiet and Loud

Art and communication practices to deconstruct social codes in the realm of media activism

 Project Österreichische Nachrichten (Austrian News)

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Figure 1: Project „Österreichische Nachrichten“

Together with a small group of people dressed up as news vendors, I distributed 30,000 copies of the Österreichische Nachrichten tabloid at underground stations and public spaces in Vienna in the early morning in May 2010 and May 2012 without any legal authorization from the Viennese city hall. I wrote the tabloid and it was actually a fake: I used the same visual language and wording of typical yellow press but “rewrote” the content to infiltrate a political message directed against racism, xenophobia, discrimination, and sexism. By doing so, the project used the methods of artistic appropriation and is embedded in the context of guerrilla communication.
Hundreds of people going to work in the morning took the newspaper, thinking that the Österreichische Nachrichten was just another free tabloid. However, after reading the newspaper they realized that the Österreichische Nachrichten was a persiflage aiming to intervene in mainstream discourses by addressing the politics of exclusion.
The project was supported by SOHO in Ottakring, a Viennese art and urban district project, originally founded by an artist’s initiative, and KÖR. Kunst im öffentlichen Raum Wien, an institution that supports and finances art in public space.*5 *(5)
An important starting point for this project was the report “European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia” (EUMC), which stated that in Austria, like in almost all EU countries, people with a “migrant background” are represented predominantly in a negative way in the media, where they are often depicted as infantilized subjects, criminals, or as having beat the system to falsely live off of social benefits. These representations of migrants and the concomitant “strategies of stereotyping” (Hall 1994)star (*5) are echoed by the Austrian daily newspapers Heute, Österreich, and the Kronen Zeitung, the latter a right-wing populist tabloid with an average daily readership of three million. This number amounts to roughly 40 percent of the daily newspaper readers in Austria, while Heute and Österreich have the biggest readership in Vienna. Around 30 percent of the people with a higher education living in Austria read these tabloids daily.*6 *(6)
From my personal experience I can say that it is quite common that people take the information in these tabloids as a given, without questioning the mechanisms of manipulation behind them. As the Argentinian author Veron says, “In our relationship with the mass media, we believe in a speech not because we have found that it is true, we believe in it because we consider it true” (Veron 1987: IV).star (*6)

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Hall, Stuart (1994): Rassismus und kulturelle Identität. Ausgewählte Schriften 2, Hamburg: Argument.

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Veron, Eliseo (1987): Construir el acontecimiento, Buenos Aires: Gedisa.

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www.derstandard.at (Last visited: January 3, 2014)

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www.heute.at (Last visited: January 3, 2014)

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http://www.augustin.or.at (Last visited: January 3, 2014)

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http://www.austrianposters.at (Last visited: January 3, 2014)

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http://www.orf.at (Last visited: January 3, 2014)

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Der Standard (2012): Männer einmal anders. http://diestandard.at/1317019799614/Regendering-Media-Maenner-einmal-anders, date: October 10, 2012. last visited: January 3, 2014 – translated by author

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Heute (2012): Was bedeuten diese Bilder am Karlsplatz? http://www.heute.at/news/oesterreich/wien/art23652,610008, October 11, 2012, last visited: January 3, 2014 – translated by author

Hansel Sato ( 2014): Furtive, Quiet and Loud. Art and communication practices to deconstruct social codes in the realm of media activism. In: p/art/icipate – Kultur aktiv gestalten # 04 , https://www.p-art-icipate.net/furtive-quiet-and-loud/