Touching Time in the Memorial – Kunst ist Klasse

Special Project within the framework of ÖAD Funding Kunst ist Klasse

Touching Time in the Memorial is a project of pluralistic remembrance. Young people work with artists from the Symposion Lindabrunn association to create and design a sculpture of many monuments to commemorate the concentration camp in Hirtenberg, Lower Austria. Women from all over Europe were exploited here for the local munitions factory in the immediate vicinity of the symposium. Under the project management of Petra Mühlmann-Hatzl, artist and VSL board member, art mediator and educator at _dieARTE and at BG Neunkirchen, pupils at MS Hirtenberg and VSL artists learn about the history of their region and develop individual and collective references in their own monuments.

Many students have transnational references to history, for some war is not a past but a present family reality. Workshops with artists who have dealt with intercultural perspectives of historiography and monuments as cultural and artistic settings in their work and in some cases also from their biographies, create an awareness of design and symbolism based on the subcamp stele and the sculptures at the Lindabrunn Symposium. In June 2025, Touching Time in the Memorial will be presented at the Lindabrunn Symposium. The sculpture of the many monuments will be exhibited in the Lindabrunn Symposium sculpture park over the summer and will subsequently be on display at the Hirtenberg secondary school. The project and process will also be documented and published by all participants on the Digital Holocaust Memorial platform.