fatih aydogdu

STATE IN TREATY
life with a pre-design
a contribution to the commemorative year

In 2005 Austria commemorated the founding of the Second Republic, the war years, its development after the State Treaty and above all the festive act of the treaty's signing. It was practically impossible to avoid the celebrations.
The committee for kunst im öffentliche raum niederösterreich (art in the public space in Lower Austria) initiated a poster action that made direct reference to the celebrations connected with the signing of the State Treaty. For the project, nine international artists were invited to take up a position on the subject of the State Treaty and design a poster connected with it. The invited artists were >a room of one's own<, Fatih Aydogdu, Martin Gostner, Julius Koller, Andreja Kuluncic, Jonathan Quinn, Meike Schmidt-Gleim/Anna Artaker, David Thorne and Jun Yang.
The poster series was presented in June 2005 at an opening event in Klosterneuburg and hung afterwards in the local communities in Lower Austria and distributed as a brochure. The posters were put up at key locations involved in the State Treaty celebrations and aroused great interest both there and within the local communities. In the course of the summer the posters developed into collectors items of a special kind.
We had not expected such lively interest in the rather difficult and complex themes which formed the subject-matter of the posters.
This encouraged us in our attempt to repeatedly present unconventional and difficult artistic work in public space. The citizens showed their appreciation with unusually positive reactions.
We were well aware of the difficulties involved, connected to the multi-layered nature of the topic, the implementation of the project and the challenge presented by the subject-matter. This is perhaps not the appropriate place to express our gratitude to the artists, but they showed a great deal of courage both in the contributions that they made and in agreeing to participate in what proved to be a rather delicate undertaking.
(PRINZGAU/podgorschek)

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* temporary project