Cartographies of white, masculine and anthropocentric Supremacy through Cultural Representations in Vienna, Alt-Hietzing: Pedagogies of Remembrance and Re-Futuring Practices of/within/through Cultural Heritage

Abstract

The past and our knowledge of it shape our perspectives and narratives of how we perceive the world and how we act in it. Since the murder of George Floyd and the great wave of solidarity through the BlackLivesMattermovement, the issue of memory and colonial representations of white supremacy in the form of monuments and place names has also been up for international debate. Monument demolitions and interventions at monuments in many places highlight the urgency of addressing issues of monument and memory politics from a critical perspective. The project is dedicated to idealized colonial continuities on the basis of specific monuments and representative sites in Vienna Alt-Hietzing. The research sees great potential in Critical Heritage Studies to meet challenges of critical memory work and to analyze and overcome colonial and anthropocentric narratives and memory politics. As a decolonial project, the research project is multi epistemic and transdisciplinary, conceiving itself at the intersection of theory and practice. Methodologically, posthumanist and decolonial approaches serve the epistemological and ontological investigation of the meaning of specific monuments and representative sites. The project involves the development of a method of mediation based on affective-material performative practices and a responsive reflexivity and affective sensibilities developed for this purpose. The endeavor is understood as future-oriented "historical" work to deconstruct hegemonic macro- and micro-narratives and to generate possibilities of alternative futures, solidarities, and transformations.

Short biography

Petz Haselmayer (their artist alter ego is Walter Xenia Ego), is a white non-binary artist, teacher, researcher and curator and combines the respective fields of activity transdisciplinary in different practices. They research Austrian colonial history in Vienna's urban space and critical whiteness, as well as the interconnectedness of racism, class, and gender. They developed the performative city walk Hietzing colonial: Deconstructing white Innocence and worked in the project cycle Re-Making Hügel with several artists, activists, pupils and students on the person and the monument of Karl Alexander Hügel. Currently, they are working on their dissertation at theAcademy of Fine Arts Vienna on white, male, and anthropocentric supremacy through cultural representations in Vienna, developing performative methods of unlearning as future-generating practices of cultural heritage. Recentpublications include Re-Making Hügel: Versuche dekolonialer Praxen in Kunst, Bildung und kollektivemGedächtnis, and Koloniale Kontinuitäten im Stadtbild Wiens: Erinnerungspolitische Anstöße zu weißer_ Überlegenheit am Beispiel von Straßennamen und Denkmälern.