Belongings in motion - A ludic intervention in Viennese municipal buildings

The "Moving Living Room" in the Reumannhof in Vienna's Fifth District used images and narratives of belonging to form groups of people, draw and shift boundaries and create and question their own narratives. The space in which this took place was staged, highly technical and a foreign body in the significant municipal building of Red Vienna. The participants, most of whom were complete strangers to each other, were able to submit to the "as if" in the magic circle and find themselves for a ludic moment as a special form of collectivity.

The "Moving Living Room" was part of a multi-year research project and experiment at the same time. Against the backdrop of the state and municipal elections in Vienna in 2010 and the media focus on a duel between the ruling Social Democrats and the opposition far right, the project explored the political mobilization of affiliations in Vienna's municipal buildings. In the "Moving Living Room", the first results from the field study were to be tested and criticized together with the residents.

The lecture presents the experimental set-up, discusses the results and contextualizes the research project in terms of contemporary history. The question of how play, which according to Johan Huizinga is always unproductive and inherently meaningful, can be translated into a research design will be explored using specific excerpts from the conversations.

Dr. Florian Bettel(Opens in a new tab)  holds a doctorate in cultural studies from the Institute of Art Studies, Art Education and Art Mediation at the University of Applied Arts Vienna(Opens in a new tab) . He has headed the Department of Cultural Studies there since July 2022.