performance
Two church activists scolded me, and one of them slapped me on the face with religious propaganda material, throwing flyers at me, I suppose asking me to re-educate myself.
A stout FPÖ female security guard, dressed in a dirndl, a traditional Austrian outfit, and carrying a wooden barrel full of brandy on her belt, pushed me of the scene after a while because she no longer wanted to tolerate a walking suitcase that gently pushed her party fellows and musicians who were getting ready to play at that gathering.
The performance attracted a lot of attention at the very busy platform in front of the main entrance of the train station. The reactions of the audience were fascinating—they quite literally took care of me throughout the performance. People came to check if I was okay, to help me lock myself inside the suitcase, to unzip the suitcase and let me out… Two girls patiently and carefully tried to pull out my hair that was stuck in the zipper of the suitcase.
After winning a production grant at the international competition Art in Public Space Tyrol, with my performance project proposal, I published an open call for a three-day-long Mis(s)placed Women? performance art workshop in which I produced a total of six new performances and site-specific interventions across Innsbruck with three participants, myself included. The process and the results of the workshop were presented on May 13, 2018, in Die Bäckerei. For the realisation of each of the performances we have carefully chosen a specific location and context. I performed Misplaced Women? and the Tourist Suitcase, for the very first time, as a 30 minute performance at the place that was considered the most unwelcoming and dangerous in the city: Innsbruck train station. During the performance, I went through transformations, from a businesswoman, to a tourist, and finally, to a homeless woman, using as my props hats, caps, a disposable camera, sunglasses, different clothes, fruit yoghurt, sun cream, and miscellaneous items that I took out of one oversized suitcase that had many stickers on it, such as: Hawaii, Aloha, Jamaica, Holland, Norway, Praha. It was given to me by my son’s grandparents, pensioners based in Innsbruck, who travelled to all these places, and who had previously fled, in 1969, as refugees from Czechoslovakia, via Yugoslavia, to Austria. The performance attracted a lot of attention at the very busy platform in front of the main entrance of the train station. The reactions of the audience were fascinating—they quite literally took care of me throughout the performance. People came to check if I was okay, to help me lock myself inside the suitcase, to unzip the suitcase and let me out… Two girls patiently and carefully tried to pull out my hair that was stuck in the zipper of the suitcase.
The next day, I performed the 60-minute-long performance Misplaced Women? and the Tourist Suitcase, in a slightly different form, using identical props as the previous day, going through transformations, this time from a businesswoman, to a tourist, to a homeless woman, to an immigrant, in the most popular location in the city, on the square in front of the famous Golden Roof, downtown in the heart of the historical centre. At this location, the performance was received quite differently, because the passers-by that use this public space are also different. It turned out that the performance was very well received among many tourists from Korea and India, who were pleased to chat with the suitcase that walked around on its feet wearing flip flops, and was sometimes gently nudging the crowd. They recorded the performance and posted it on social media. Coincidentally, the performance took place at the same location as some FPÖ (Austria’s xenophobic right-wing party) event. Two church activists scolded me, and one of them slapped me on the face with religious propaganda material, throwing flyers at me, I suppose asking me to re-educate myself. A stout FPÖ female security guard, dressed in a dirndl, a traditional Austrian outfit, and carrying a wooden barrel full of brandy on her belt, pushed me of the scene after a while because she no longer wanted to tolerate a walking suitcase that gently pushed her party fellows and musicians who were getting ready to play at that gathering. I later learned that my performance assistant was also threatened with the police if she didn’t collect the “garbage” created during the performance. Of course we intended to clean up our materials at the end, when all the things I originally took out of the suitcase while performing would be placed back.
(Tanja Ostojić: Mis(s)placed Women?, 2009-2022, A Collaborative Art Project, exhib. catalogue, Depo and Anadolukultur, Istanbul, Turkey, 2022.)
TANJA OSTOJIĆ 