STRICKEN, the installation by Magda Korsinsky

STRICKEN, the installation is based on interviews with Afro-German women whose white grandmothers lived during the National Socialist era. What is their thoughts on their grandparents’ Nazi past? How does this knowledge affect their relationship with them? How does it affect how they see themselves? At the core of this interdisciplinary work is the critical analysis of our ancestors’ legacy and how we relate to these patterns and entanglements. An expansive multimedia installation forms the project’s visual framework. Textile materials from the everyday life of the women interviewed were sewn together to form projection surfaces and patchworks of historical narratives. Video and sound documents provide unique perspectives of the power of family legacy. The project was inspired by the book My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me: A Black Woman Discovers Her Family’s Nazi Past by Jennifer Teege, who learned that she was the granddaughter of the Austrian concentration camp commandant Amon Göth at the age of 38.

The installation STRICKEN is part of the exhibition project “The knowledge potential of childhood” and was curated by Birgit Lurz, Verena Melgarejo Weinandt and Wolfgang Schlag. The artistic works and educational formats presented in ZOOM Children’s Museum, in front of the Parliament and in the House of Austrian History deal with questions relating to the construction of perspectives and strategies against discrimination.

A co-operation with Wiener Festwochen into the city / Das Wissen der Kindheit.