Public Interfaces for Citizen Participation

The social production process included the newcomers right from the beginning. Refugee organizations in Weimar were contacted and social events were organized to get to know refugees and involve them in our project. The first meeting between the newcomers and the artist was a casual barbeque where he explained the idea of the project, and invited whoever is interested to take part in a project presentation.

The artist’s idea was to conduct interviews with the refugees about their journeys,
their lives before and after coming to Germany, their families, and personal
experiences, that would later on be projected on the sculpture.

The first interviews were conducted by the artist himself, were students from the social production team would attend and observe his way of communication, and try to learn his techniques in order to conduct the interviews themselves after he had left.

The monument question platform (MQP) was an important part of the live session during the final performance, but its design development had started in the early stages of the project, where the team discussed its idea and function with the artist during the workshops held when Krzysztof Wodiczcko was in Weimar.

The MQP is a platform for communication between the audience and the monument, provoking intellectual conversations in public space. Inspired by the old concept of the circus tent, a structure that when it appears in town, it indicates that there is a show taking place. In Krzysztof Wodiczcko’s words “The Circus has arrived!”. This strange looking structure was placed in Theaterplatz a few days before the intervention, as an attractor, to capture people’s attention and give them information about the performance taking place during the night.

The design of the structure has gone through so many changes until we have reached the final design decision. The MediaArchitecture student team has submitted different proposals. Finally elevating the interlocutor to speak with the sculpture on a similar eye-level was conceptually preferred. Thus the final design was based on a set of steps leading up to a speaker’s platform, where the participants may address questions to the sculpture.

The form of the structure has a futuristic design, inspired by the status of the newcomers in their new environment, and the words of Krzysztof Wodiczcko, where he described them feeling as strangers, while others see them as strangers as well. These feelings alienate them, making them feel uncomfortable to speak up and be heard.