About Wienwoche

The non-citizen movement

These words arise at a time when the outcome of the Austrian parliamentary elections is anticipated with fear and anguish. Considering the loud absence of political participation, the (un)predictable future is not surprising. The systemic exclusion persists, overshadowing the societal contributions of illegalized people and marginalized (non)nationals forced to maintain the system. While (non)citizens fulfill obligations, politics is remarkably united across the spectrum — national welfare above (more-than-)human rights. Conditioned participation is authorized only as the renouncement of difference, justifying and imposing Western eurocentric societal hierarchies. Some sustain the others, while others preserve class peace and racialized capitalism. With such unsettling realities, where do we move from here?

Contrary to the deeply seated logic of “divide and rule”, the struggle for full participation of all  members of the society does not undermine hard won citizen rights. While the weight of the voting pen holds collective power, electing to abstain from practicing citizen rights bears a crucial difference from being excluded from making such a decision in the first place. Acquiring citizen rights in the current world of nation states cannot be satisfying without contesting repressively normalized structures governing the everyday.

This festival is financed by the contributions of all members of the society and therefore belongs to all its members. What forces us to obey provides tools for dismantling. This year‘s projects map the cracks in the system in order to (re)activate political imaginaries. They celebrate the unionization of the un(der)represented to have, embrace and exercise our own rights.

While We wish you a safe ride appropriates ableist corporate slogans and suggests a subversive interpretation of the standard freelance contract clause, Wir sprechen für uns selbst! uses formally accepted communication channels with the imprisoned to engage processes of resocialization through artmaking. The invasive strategies of the European Union securing prosperity for its citizens are challenged by a radical exchange within the ANTI-EXTRACTION PEOPLE’S SCHOOL. Shameless resistance and nonconforming liberation become artivist strategies of BUNX and Güllüminaj followed by the unapologetic resilience and liberating persistence in embracing poetic forms of active remembrance as in the Fields of Resistance. When “Leitkultur” results in cuts of base funding, migrant cultures continue facing erasure by means of benevolent assimilation. That is the reason to stand strongly with maiz and say Die Welt braucht uns!

WIENWOCHE cannot change political will, but can seize the unaddressed spaces of action. The unattended and the stray infiltrate cultural policies, contributing to new visions around the future of human and rights of nature. Dignity is not negotiable! Transformative justice is the only rightful distribution of egalitarian principles in the coalition of the (inter)planetary stateless and globally classless living beings.