The Messenger Vienna, 2021
ongoing
“A messenger must deliver a message of vital importance.
But first she must find the one person able to understand the message.”
Opening a new chapter, the European Kunsthalle has invited the artist Dora García to bring the durational performance The Messenger to Vienna. A performer (The Messenger) receives an audio message that she/he has to memorise. The only information the messenger is given is that the message is composed in a language spoken by one of the many linguistic communities calling Vienna their home. She/he is neither able to understand the message nor capable of identifying the language. The messenger’s task is to find a person who speaks the language and deciphers the message’s meaning.
(Suddenly the thought occurs to me that I have not yet spoken to anyone.)
García’s durational performances often build on and investigate intra-relational constellations between audience, work and place, giving ample agency and authorship to the performer who carries out the commissioned task.
(I repeat the message several times, hoping he would have an idea after all. He listens to me, shakes his head. When he hears this language, he thinks of South Asia. He couldn’t say more either. His company arrives. I hear Greek again…)
The Messenger is not primarily a search for the meaning of the message, nor do translation programs help the performer to fulfil the task. Rather, a personal interaction between the messenger and the Viennese community, speaking the language of the message, is necessary to achieve meaning and significance.
(Maybe you can understand my message? Unfortunately, no. No Korean. That sounds somehow more like Pakistan or from the nearby region, they’d venture. The girl next to me takes off her headphones. Apparently she followed our conversation. She wants to hear the message too. I repeat it.)
The Messenger first took place in Brussels in 2002 and has since been realized in ten other cities.
(Now is a good time for the message, it flashes through my mind. “It reminds me of Dari,” says one of the two. From my questioning facial expression, she can probably tell right away that I’ve never heard of Dari. It is a Persian language, she explains. She herself comes from Hong Kong and does not speak the language. But a colleague from Afghanistan speaks Dari. “Will she come for swimming today, too?” I ask excitedly.)
As the artist explains, the deciphering of the message and the explorations this requires are meant to take place in what she calls “low-intensity mode”: integrated into the performer’s everyday life, activities, errands, interests, curiosity, strolls and rides through the city.
(We listen to the message three times. She says it sounds to her like a person who speaks Georgian with a thick Persian accent. I ask her how did she arrive at such a complex assumption. “Just go and listen to Georgian videos on YouTube,” she replies.)
For The Messenger Vienna, the performer reports about his inquiries in a day-by-day online diary on the artist’s and the European Kunsthalle’s website. The diary allows to share observations through text and photos, and to report back on personal encounters. The diary entries also serve as an interface to a wider public where we, as readers, enter the work. As a place on its own, it speaks via the messenger’s thoughts and statements of Vienna’s social, historical and current conditions, its citizens, narratives and codes as well as cultural gaps.
Read The Messenger Vienna’s diary here.
About the European Kunsthalle and The Messenger Vienna.
Dora García, The Messenger.
The Messenger Vienna is performed by: Sebastiano Sing
The European Kunsthalle is an institution without its own space. In its specific form it is connected with other places: It always takes place in figurations.
Artistic Directors: Rike Frank, Vanessa Joan Müller
Board: Sabeth Buchmann, Dorit Margreiter, Kate Strain, Pieternel Vermoortel
