donhofer. puts the cat among the pigeons.
"Pöchlarn - Today´s the opening of the initiative "kulturwindow" in Pöchlarn, district Melk. But at the rather unsophisticated event there could be an annoyance. Artist donhofer. will respond to the case Strasser. "I will prove the politicians and the audience hard", the artist announces. A video installation and explicit button giveaways are prearranged. The event starts at 18.30h."
This little article in the Austrian newspaper "Kurier" set the ball rolling. At eight in the morning donhofer.'s telephone rings non-stop. The curator of the exhibition was the first one who raged.
To understand why this had happened you have to know that the causa strasser was a lobbying scandal in the Austrian party ÖVP, which was at its climax at this time. Furthermore this event was sponsored by this party, and also the curator and the city council of culture were members of the ÖVP.
During the afternoon the tension and the fear of what was going to happen were rising even higher; when the curator's nerves were on edge and he started to remove donhofer.'s video installation "seven seconds of shit" (which at this point wasn't running). donhofer. told the curator that this would be perceived as censorship for sure. So the curator began to reinstall the work.
At 18:30 the event began and donhofer. was waiting outside the museum to welcome the guests and to give buttons to them with a golden handshake. The sentence "you are not included, you are the seventh" was printed on the buttons. It was one of the sentences which were also used by Strasser, when he told British reporters (who were incognito) that they were his seventh clients. donhofer. said to the arriving guests that they would be part of the whole artwork if they put on the buttons. So about 300 little Strassers were joining this event.
The video installation was now active - the audience could watch a video with a six-second handshake. In the seventh second you could see Strasser and another member of the ÖVP party.
> read the newspaper article
> read the newspaper article
