THE NON-CITIZEN MOVEMENT

Amidst the revived streets of Vienna, as the city awakens from its almost serene vacation season, a roar echoes every September, hijacking political, social, and cultural debates. Since 2012, WIENWOCHE has fused activism and art to conceptualize political participation and address challenges and injustices^1. For this article, I had the opportunity to delve into the festival's heart by interviewing a broad group of voices behind this year's edition. I spoke with WIENWOCHE Artistic Director Jelena Micić and Co-Curator Araba Evelyn Johnston-Arthur, as well as with Jonas Baur and Bettina Pocsai from the DePART Collective, Fabio Hofer, Ana Mikadze, and Madelaine Engstler from the State of Matter association, and Sundaraprasad Ramasamy Paramaguru and Rasa Kavaliauskaite from the Riders Collective. Each interview enriched my understanding of the festival’s many projects, illuminating their messages, ideas, and aspirations.

This year, WIENWOCHE delves into "THE NON-CITIZEN MOVEMENT," a theme that couldn't be more urgent as systemic exclusion and oppression creep ever closer. As the festival’s current artistic director, Jelena Micić, states, "the topic of this year’s edition wasn’t chosen because it’s cool, but because it is a f***ing necessity.” Jelena stresses that raising one's voice in a system that institutionalizes racial discrimination is fraught with risks. “The system not only denies the rights of the people it discriminates against, but it also questions their legal existence, making it both dangerous and unsafe for all of us to speak out.” While some may take a democratic participation for granted, for many, it's an abstract, dream-like idea out of reach. Thus, WIENWOCHE creates a rare possibility to express other political ideas within the system.

Jelena Micić reflects on returning to the topics and approaches of WIENWOCHE from its first years. For instance, the 2013 project “WahlweXel jetzt!” smartly subverted the system by inviting eligible voters to cast their votes on behalf of those of us who were legally barred from voting. For WIENWOCHE 2024, the Riders Collective, in collaboration with the project initiators, the State of Matter association, employs similar subversive tactics in their project, 'WE WISH YOU A SAFE RIDE,' reflecting a shared method of engagement across projects. The initiative calls on the festival audience to volunteer and take over food delivery riders' shifts on a solidarity basis. This enables the riders to have paid time off to attend workshops and counseling sessions covering a wide range of topics, from understanding their working contract conditions and legal rights, to navigating the labor market, to procedures for recognizing their previous educational degrees.²

In the city landscape, the food delivery rider is a contemporary centaur, a fusion of metal vehicle and human flesh. Covered in uniforms, the (migrant) rider loses their humane face, becoming an anonymous unit. The cheerful orange, pink, and blue corporate uniforms mock the value of life, as the bright colors contrast starkly with the hidden reality of a highly exploitative economy that turns humans into disposable items. Regardless of hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, earthquakes, ice melting, or scorching heat, food delivery platforms "wish a safe ride" to their labor force. The State of Matter association is developing a video portrait series to accompany the project in the digital realm. The team explains that this series allows us to "see beyond the uniforms and recognize the lives and stories of the people behind them, thus restoring the riders' rightful individuality."

The project team was enthusiastic during our interview, passionately discussing their work. Rider-activists, riders, and artists have come together with a focused approach, drawing on their hard-earned knowledge of riders' needs. Since 2021, the Riders Collective has been addressing the myriad pitfalls of food delivery platforms, not just for riders but for consumers as well^.3 These issues include deceptive freelance contracts that offer minimal rights, coupled with inadequate onboarding training—typically a brief, one-hour introduction to the app that fails to cover workers' rights. To underscore the latter, the team is developing an ironic onboarding performance. The Collective also critiques the misleading portrayal of delivery work as a fun and flexible job, while addressing more complex challenges such as the convoluted process for booking shifts, the financial burden of bike repairs and healthcare costs, rider surveillance, and a strict penalty system.

To tackle these challenges, the project team will be developing workshops at WIENWOCHE  to strengthen riders' knowledge on these matters. They hope to broaden the project's reach, motivating more riders to come together, unite, and organize to advocate for their rights and improve their working conditions. Additionally, the project's program includes a walking tour called "Nowhere but Everywhere" through the city’s invisible (food) delivery infrastructures aka “ghost kitchens.”⁴ The tour promises an eye-opening exploration of the city.

Walking tours raise not just the question of how much we truly know and see in the city, but also the central question of who is manipulating the process of collective seeing and why. The WIENWOCHE project “FIELDS OF RESISTANCE - ROMANO ARCHIVES OF TOMORROW'S REMEMBRANCE” takes this concept further by organizing walking tours that uncover Vienna's forgotten urban Nazi concentration camp structures in Favoriten (Hellerwiese), Simmering (Wankogstätten), and Floridsdorf (Bruckhaufen). ⁵ These tours contrast the sites with the harsh reality faced by young Rom*nja and Sinti*zze.⁶

The DePART Collective, which has been active for three years now and has members bringing expertise from different countries, offers a transnational view on history. By tracing the threads of Nazi camp structures, DePART marks Vienna’s standing as a crossroads in Central Europe and also highlights the  violent silence on Anti-Roma racism. In our interview, the Collective emphasized the importance of locating these camp structures, noting, "History isn't a distant relic; it’s here, in our neighborhoods." They describe their tours as a blend of historical facts and poignant biographical insights from Rom*nja and Sinti*zze individuals, saying, "We craft emotional narratives that amplify local community voices." Importantly, they added, "We don’t just focus on mourning; we celebrate the lives and stories of the people we honor."

By revealing hidden histories and stories, active remembrance becomes not just an annual gesture but a continuous practice of care embedded in our current realities.  WIENWOCHE co-curator Araba Evelyn Johnston-Arthur added that the walks organized by the Collective “might not only be focused on uncovering the concentration camp structures but also offer a practice of mattering unmattered histories and resistances, thus building a bridge to critical fabulation.”

This concept of critical fabulation ⁷—where buried biographies come alive through imagination—is central to DePART's work. A key practice involves honoring individuals by addressing letters to them, keeping their memories alive. In their installation, audio columns emerge from the soil to play these personally addressed letters to Rom*nja and Sinti*zze whose lives were taken in the Porajmos, the genocide committed against the Rom*nja and Sinti*zze people by the National Socialists^.8The Collective believes that these audio installations transform public spaces. "By highlighting individual stories, we overwrite the dominant narratives written by 'winners,'" they explained. "This process reconnects public spaces to communities and reactivates people's networks." They added that the program culminates in a closing performance celebrating the tales of queer and trans* Romani kin, which "adds and forms new connections."

In times of organized forgetting, collective amnesia of racism, selective historical omissions, and the absurd commemoration of “national heroes” while gaslighting others, understanding the history of Anti-Romani terror is essential for interrogating our practices of remembrance. Araba Evelyn Johnston-Arthur emphasizes this point, stressing that addressing Anti-Romani violence and racism is crucial to challenging prevailing narratives and realities. She highlights the interconnectedness of histories and the generative power of resistance movements across different regions. "Where there is violence, there is also resistance," she asserts. "We must actively counter the silencing of past struggles and previous collective efforts through intersecting different contexts of creation, utopia, and ongoing struggles."

Facing injustices in the world, at home, at one’s second or third home, the complicated home in places where legal and basic human rights are failed, is both depressing and anxiety-provoking. It's easy to fall into despair and feel hopeless. Talking about these issues can lead to philosophical verbosity or an overwhelming sense of futility. It's understandable to want to avoid further pain. However, WIENWOCHE evokes a different feeling—one filled with genuine excitement and a sense of Vorfreude (eager anticipation). As the festival’s artistic director puts it, WIENWOCHE is not “a closed corner for good migrants or a citizen feel-good space where city funding creates an illusion of inclusion for migrants to silence dissent.” Micić continues, “It won’t solve all the problems, but it certainly provides a platform to identify political and social needs, stimulate debates, and support advocates for change. Importantly, it remains accessible to all.”

The real magic, as I see it, lies in how the team and all contributors manage to advance the system without pouring salt in our wounds. Instead, they give hope and strength, creating an environment that nurtures aspiration and resilience.

Full program on: wienwoche.org

Footnotes

Bibliography

DePART Collective. "DePART Collective Website." Accessed August 9, 2024. https://www.depart.community.

Hartman, Saidiya. "Venus in Two Acts." Small Axe 12, no. 2 (June 2008): 1–14. https://doi-org.uaccess.univie.ac.at/10.1215/-12-2-1.

"Orte am Rand - Roma und Sinti in Wien." Accessed August 9, 2024. http://www.romane-thana.at/kapitel-9.php.

Riders Collective. "Riders Collective Website." Accessed August 9, 2024. https://www.riderscollective.at.

WIENWOCHE. "10 Jahre WIENWOCHE - Publikation." Accessed August 9, 2024. https://www.wienwoche.org/en/2024/press.

WIENWOCHE. "WIENWOCHE Website." Accessed August 9, 2024. https://www.wienwoche.org/en/2024/home.

Interviews with

WIENWOCHE Artistic Director Jelena Micić

WIENWOCHE Co-Curator and Project Dramaturgy Araba Evelyn Johnston-Arthur

DePART Collective: Jonas Baur and Bettina Pocsai

State of Matter Verein: Fabio Hofer, Ana Mikadze, and Madelaine Engstler

Riders Collective: Sundaraprasad Ramasamy Paramaguru and Rasa Kavaliauskaite