Arbeitsproben Very Vienna Artikel Andreas Rainer

8/6/2019 Arbeitsproben Very Vienna Artikel Andreas Rainer

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Very iennaViennese Culture and Lifestyle

Beyond its Clichées

Power in TranquilityThe Chinese Diaspora in Vienna

Hands On, Minds On, Hearts On!Vienna’s Approach to Children’s Culture

One Night in ViennaThe City’s Vibrant and Unique Cluband Bar SceneStep by StepDiscovering Viennese Dancing Tradition





Very Vienna 3

Dear Readers,

Thank you for picking up this magazine and for your

interest. In connection with the May 2010 Austria-Dayat Shanghai’s World Expo,we are happy to send aspecial greeting from Vienna, the capital city of Austria, to every single reader. You may agree thatVienna is famous for classical music, theatre,opera,and for its wonderful imperial architecture. And, of course,we are happy that you enjoy and admire all of this. The world’s interest and admiration has givenVienna got the reputation of being city of livinghistory. Having a good image is an asset,but beingnothing more than that which an image presentswould be bad for a city’s vital identity.

That is why we would also like you to know thatVienna is more than just its history. On the founda-tions of history, a culture of reflexion, of presence, andalso of openness to the future is flourishing. One mightforget that beyond the clichés and stereotypes, thegorgeous art,a marvellous show can only be realisticand credible if there is an intrinsically autochthonousand authentic side to it: the “Very Vienna”side.

You may know that Vienna feeds from its local genius.That,however,you may not know well: the dialecticattitude in facing everyday life and wrestling with itscontradictions. This is called the ‘Viennese Mentality’and it is a blend of opposites: humour and sadness,willto live and desire to die, astonishing beauty andtriumphant mediocrity, open and wide horizons andsmall minds,belief and scepticism,overpoweringsorrow and sometimes negligent carelessness, easily-

offended criticism and irrational empathy and warmth.All this, and so much more,embody the psychology of an urban society characterized by rich social andcultural history, different cultural traditions, religiousprograms,and worlds of knowledge. Freud himself could not explain it.

In order to give you an insight into Vienna as it is foritself and through itself, the students of the Depart-ment of Communication at he Faculty of SocialSciences at the University of Vienna tried to portrayVienna as it is not shown in worldwide mainstreammedia: as a space for creative art with a particular lifestyle.We also wanted to portrait the city as a place of science and knowledge, but because there is only somuch space in this magazine,we had to restrict our-selves to some small examples –those should, at least,show that creativity also matters in science.

However,there are big differences between Viennaand Shanghai,but there is at least one similarity:Better City, Better Life!

Enjoy the magazine,

Warm Regards,

Dr.Thomas A.Bauer, University Professor at the

Department of Communication / University of Vienna

Very iennaV Page Content

4 Power in Tranquillity

The Chinese Diaspora in Vienna7 Chinese New Year ’s Concert

in Vienna

8 The First Chinese Lantern Festivalin Vienna

9 Step by stepDiscovering Vienna’DancingTradition

12 Light,Shadows and MotionVienna’s Unique CinemaLandscape

14 “Hands,on,Minds on,Hearts On!”

Vienna’s Approach to Children’sCulture18 Poems,Enzi’s and Tomatoes

Traces of Contemporary Artin Public Space

19 An Urban InterventionSoho Festival at Vienna’sBrunnenmarkt

22 One Night in ViennaThe City’s Vibrant and UniqueClub and Bar Scene

25 Falafel, SauerkrautandDumplingsVienna´s Exotic and Lively InnerCity Market

26 Problems? No,Creatives Seizethe OpportunityCreative People Giving &Benefitting in a City Filled withPossibilities

28 Richness of the 100 Voices100 Communities on TV to ShowTheir Insights and Interests

30 Architecture Macchiato:Garnishing ArchitectureYoung Architecture Contributingto a Vital Cityscape

34 The Baron and His HarnessAboard one of Vienna’s FamousFiaker Carriages

37 Death Must Be VienneseEurope’s Biggest Cemetry anda Sepultural Museum

IMPRINTVery Vienna.Department of Communication,University of ViennaSchopenhauerstrasse 32,1180 Vienna, Austria

Editor-in-Chief Thomas [email protected]+43 4277 49336

Executive EditorAxel [email protected]+43 4277 49375

EditorsLaura BakmannJelena GucaninEdith HammerFabian KretschmerJosef Ladenhauf Judith ListKatharina OkeAndreas RainerAmelie SpringerMichael Zita

English ProofreadingIphigenia Moraitini

Chinese TranslationsCelia Tsui

Graphic-DesignKarl-Heinz Maireder

The Magazine Very Vienna was producedby students of the Department of Commu-nication of the university of Vienna. Thedepartment is the largest communicationeducation institution in the German-speaking countries in Europe in terms of students. Up to 6000 students are studyingin Bachelor, Master or PhD programmes,each year about 1000 young people start anundergraduate programme.Fields of study include journalism, advertising,public relations, media management, communi-cation politics, media paedagogy,media psychology,communication research andmuch more.The Department runs an exchange

programme with the Shanghai-based Fudan University, Faculty of Journalism. Each year, a dozen of Austrian students goto Shanghai for a semester within the Media Communication Master programme MCM. In return,up to twenty students fromShanghai stay in Vienna and Salzburg for acouple of months.

Viennese Cultureand LifestyleBeyond its Clichées



22 Very Vienna

One ight in ViennaEverybody knows Vienna as the

home of art, culture and SigmundFreud. However, not many outsideof Vienna are aware of the fact thatVienna offers a very vibrant andunique club and bar scene for theyoung at heart.

By Andreas Rainer

At four in the morning, Fayola is havingher first bites of a Viennese Käsekrainer,a fried sausage made with small chunksof cheese, which doesn’t exist in herhome country of Kenya. Anna fromGermany is sipping a can of beer, whileKonrad, the only Austrian in our group, ishaving a conversation with strangers onhow to solve the economic crisis.We are in the first district of Vienna, at aWürstelstand , a place that sells sausagesand cold drinks and that acts as a gather-ing point for the rich and poor, partyvictims and street workers of the city.“In Kenya, all the clubs look pretty much

the same and play similar kinds of music.In Vienna, there is a club for every kind of music,” Fayola says of the night that liesbehind us - a night which started morethan six hours ago at the Schikaneder .

Watching a movie,Viennese styleThe Schikaneder is a mix between a cin-ema, a club and a bar,one of many placesin Vienna with a unique concept whereone can start a Saturday night. At ten inthe evening, the place is already crowdedwith people who came for the moviethat was shown before and are now enjoying a drink at the bar. A group of people are sharing a huge birthday cake,one of them offering a piece to Anna,apparently confusing her with someoneelse. “Lots of students, intellectuals andartists come here to watch an artsymovie and get drunk afterwards,”Konradexplains to the non-Austrians in thegroup. As on most nights, a DJ is playingright in front of a wall on which a car-toon movie is projected. The sound of the

movie is muted and the projection servesonly as the visual backdrop for the club:itis not to be confused with the actualcinema, which is in a separate area.

When the Museums close,Vienna’s Clubs and Bars open theirDoors for the Partiers.

Who said Austriansdon´t dance?Michaela Schwarz



Very Vienna 23

There is a dance floor next to the DJ, butnobody is dancing. The Viennese ingeneral are not too eager to dance, espe-cially the Schikaneder crowd. Listeningaround, the topics of conversation aremusic, movies, art projects and, of course,a lot of complaining, the favourite pas-time of the Viennese.All the seats are already taken, the mostsought after being right next to theentrance, where a few canvas chairs arestanding on a little stage that is perfectlyvisible from the outside, through theglass window pane.“The Schikaneder is aplace where people go to in order to be

seen by other people. There must besomething regal about people-watchingwhile sitting on a stage. It is funny howthe Viennese are so eager to be seen bystrangers yet don’t want to get to knowthem,” Konrad adds by way of explana-tion.Looking around the Schikaneder , every-body is holding a wine glass or a beerbottle in their hands,and for most peopleit is definitely not the first drink of thenight. It gets more crowded by theminute, so our group decides to move onto another place that is within shortwalking distance. On the way there, twomen in medieval uniforms hand us someflyers. “We would like to invite you tocome to our session tonight. We will talkabout communist ideals and how to re-implement them into today’s society,”one of them explains. We politelydecline.

Clothes shopping at midnightWe arrive at our destination, a place

called Mon Ami. It looks like an averageclub at first sight, but is much more: atthe back of the club, a door leads to aclothing shop that is part of the club.

Acting on theFirst Read

Smoking is still allowedin many clubs in Vienna

Michaela Schwarz

It could have been any moment in a rehersal;actors are standing on chairs with papers intheir hands and reading out : “It is a Test!”“A Test?”“Don’t you realize, all the Cameras,

they’re watching us!” However,given thelarge audience watching and voting for theirfavorites, the event seems to be of a diferrentnature: It is Drama Slam again.Jimi Lend, the concept’s creator,presents this typeof theatre as follows:“Authors write short plays;actors will read up to ten different plays eachnight.This is different from thousands of otherperformances because the actors have never seenthe scripts before, they play ‘prima vista’. Thisway, every performance is a masterpiece of im-provisation.” It sounds experimental,but its suc-cess speaks for itself. The idea has already startedto spread around the world,with performancesin Berlin,Saint Petersburg and Graz.

The City of Vienna became aware of the successand is now sponsoring the organization that initi-ated the process:The ‘Vitamins of Society’, an as-sociation founded in Moscow with the followingstraightforward motto: “Artists are the vitamins

Drama Slam since 2007: When PoetryMasters meet Actors ArtBy Michael Zita

Artists, the Vitaminsof Society, playscripts never seenbefore© Nick Albert

of society and hence important ineveryone’s life.”[www.dramaslam.eu]

Wuzzler: Austrians suck at soccer but theyrule at the foosball table Michaela Schwarz



24 Very Vienna

People can browse through handbags,mittens, t-shirts and many more articlesof clothing while sipping a glass of wineand listening to a DJ. Anna insists onbuying a red wool beret. “It matches myglass of red wine very well,” she says, jus-tifying the price - probably the double of

what the beret costs at a regular clothingstore. Her friend from Berlin backs her upon this: “You can’t put a price tag onshopping at midnight while enjoying aglass of Chateau, I guess. That is whatfascinates me about Vienna. You don’tfind these kinds of places, even in Berlin.Vienna always manages to put an artsyside into everything.”At half past one, it is time to turn up theheat a little bit and finally move to aplace where even the Viennese dare todance.

Balkan fever in ViennaIn Club OST , the locals mingle up with aneastern European crowd, who are so ea-ger to dance and party that even theViennese can’t continue hiding behindtheir beer bottles. They start hitting thedance floor. The music seems to be ex-actly the same on every weekend: Balkanbeats mixed with electronic music,everything that gets people moving, per-formed by DJs and one or two bands,

DJ and supportMichaela Schwarz

Buying the perfectparty outfit whilepartyingMichaela Schwarz

usually from Eastern Europe. Club OST isenormously popular, probably due toVienna’s proximity to the East and thefact that the city is home to many immi-grants from the Balkan region.Tonight’s band comes from the Ukraineand features an especially unusual per-

formance: it includes the band members,all of them in their late 40s, gettingnaked on stage,cheered on by enthusias-tic chanting from the audience. What’smore, they address the crowd after al-most every song - in Ukrainian. “I guesslanguage barriers vanish as long as themusic is good enough and the alcoholdoesn’t run out,” Konrad yells over thescreaming guitar riffs.Every night comes to an end, and oursends rather early by Viennese standardsat the Würstelstand . Anna just orderedanother round of beer and Konrad andhis new friends still haven’t figured outhow to solve the economic crisis.Long before the Würstelstand closes, wemake our way home using the conven-ient Nightline system, which on Satur-day night seems more like another clubthan a means of public transport. It nevertakes long to get home, which remindsus again that while Vienna is big enoughto get lost in for a night, it is always smallenough to find your way out again.

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Arbeitsproben Very Vienna Artikel Andreas Rainer