Participative project and exhibition, 2019

Funded by Kulturhaus Brotfabrik, Vienna

Concept, research by Cosima Terrasse with Alena Iijaz and Maria Poljak

"What language do we speak? Where is your favorite place to be? Is there such a thing as a woman's body? What luxury do you allow yourself? What work do you do without pay?"

The Kreta – the Grätzl in Favoriten – tells an old story about Vienna and the former working-class district and a new story of migration and arriving in Vienna.

I (Cosima Terrasse) got to know Alena Iljaz and Maria Poljak at the Brotfabrik Wien in the course of other projects about neighborhoods. We discussed bad experiences we had as women in the district.

It’s actually a pretty universal story, except that the one we collected for the “Stille Post” exhibition also has its specifics: If your mother grew up as a woman in another country, how much is her experience like yours? How do these two lives intermingle?

We explored these questions – Alena, Maria and I – and condensed the many conversations into a chorus of mixed and anonymous answers. The reference in the title – the children’s game in which you pass on a word or a sentence in a whisper and something else comes out at the end – initially suggests failed communication.

After all, you have to pass on what you have heard as you have understood it, without being allowed to ask questions. This changes what is said from one person to the next. As a result, the starting point is often barely recognizable because syllables are misunderstood and new senses are introduced.

“An eleven-year-old
becomes a woman…
Bruh! I’m just
a bigger girl! Yesterday I was a child, now I can learn to cook? Get married?
What do I take with me?
Except that men are assholes?
I’ll be fine.
Honestly, I have a family… where the man…
the man… is allowed to do everything.
When choosing a partner –
no matter how, where, what:
The man is always in a good position. She? – She looks at character… I can speak 6 languages: Turkish
Arabic French…
Latin …German,
German? “

Extract from ”Conversations in the sunset”

Awarded the Margareta Women’s Prize

Reviewed in:

Woman, 2019

Documented as a book:
Stille Post – Was Wir Weitergeben,
ed. by Cosima Terrasse
in collaboration with Kulturhaus Brotfabrik