The Institute for Art in Public Space Styria and open youth work Styria are focusing on interventions in the spirit of renewal.
According to various experts from different fields, something NEW comes after a crisis, which evokes the image of a NEW and sustainable humanism in this world. Crises usually represent a turning point which offers the possibility to improve and the risk of taking a turn for the worse; the opportunity to reorganize social order.
For young people, external crises - such as the current coronavirus crisis - and the associated measures are particularly explosive. In adolescents, which is characterized by constant development and a strict and aggravating social framework. Open learning spaces, mobility, social interactions with friends and adults, exercise and sport - including in public spaces - are important, developmentally significant and stabilizing factors for teenagers. They need to confront adults, authorities and their environment. Tensions and conflicts in families, schools and educational establishments are therefore not uncommon in adolescence. They are important learning opportunities when growing into society.
These social contacts are an important guide for teenagers in the development of their personality. In this aspect, the return to “normality” feels like a liberation. However, there is still little room to think or implement something truly NEW.
The project NEU! (NEW!) by the Institute for Art in Public Space Styria and open youth work Styria addresses this issue with interventions in the spirit of renewal from the perspective of young people.
In 2022 the project NEU! (NEW!) took place in three Styrian cities (Knittelfeld, Kindberg and Passail) that have active open youth work. Artists were invited to their facilities and cooperated with the local children and teenagers in exploring changes in their living environment, particularly growing up in a society characterized by crises. The youth’s notions concerning their changed living environments, of regional and communal realities and their visions and for the future were combined with the artists artistic visions.
Over the course of this project, the artists Scott Clifford Evans & Anna Jermolaewa, Florian Berger and the collective Total Refusal (Susanna Flock, Leonhard Müllner, Adrian Jonas Haim, Robin Klengel) have developed temporary interventions together with the local youth in the public space of their respective communities at locations which were defined as significant for the crisis.
The participation of young members of the local communities was the focus in all stages of the project, from the discourse, the exploration of the locations, the analysis of the realities of the crisis, to the selection of the locations for the artistic interventions to the realization of the artworks. Wherever possible, young people have been given the opportunity to work together with the artists and actively contribute to and shape the creation of the artwork.
The artworks created in the collective process should make the young people's issues publicly visible and clear. The informal character and low-threshold nature of the project, the consideration of the living realities of the local youth and the link to their cultural forms of expression as well as to the concrete situations in their communities are the central elements.
Text: Florian Arlt
