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1 The practice
2 Hints for an evaluation
2.1 Strenghts and Critical Points
First of all it doesn’t seem to be fair to evaluate the exhibition without visiting it. But in form and content the project conception has some remarkable aspects.
According to Cornelia Kogoj the main strength is the way it shows migration from a hitherto mostly neglected perspective.
Moreover the conception of choosing a locality where usually “mainstream” oriented exhibitions take place implements the idea of influencing the majority’s view very well. To choose this traditional museum, in Cornelia Kogoj’s view, might be the first step of imprinting the topic in the historical self-perception of the city and furthermore in future times into the schoolbooks of Austria.
Another strength characterised by Wolfgang Kos from the Wien Museum is the interplay between an active NGO and a traditional museum with large publicity.
Involving youth and also migrant youth into the project shows the general idea of encouraging people to take part and to focus on the subject as a self-acting one.
The online version has to be appreciated as a possibility of giving the exhibition a long term and more sustainable character. At the same time the online version is not able to deliver the impression of a real exhibition and there is also a lack of completeness. In any case it serves as an instructive overview.
The exhibition tries to connect a very ambitious theoretical approach with a visible and, for a broader public, adaptable result. This problem is recognised by Wolfgang Kos from the museum as well as from Cornelia Kogoj from the Initiative Minderheit. To what extent this challenge was solved cannot be said clearly, but it seems obviously that the pictures do not try to trace the ongoing negative stereotypes or to overstress the exotic appearance of people but rather to show people leaving their home far behind and fighting in a very foreign environment where mistrust, suspiciousness and structural discrimination are the main aspects with which they were and are confronted.
There is the simple example of a father who had migrated to Austria and sends only very nice and pleasant pictures home. These pictures contrasted with the pictures of the uncomfortable reality taken by his son when he came to Austria, demonstrate only a fragment of how difficult and ambiguous the discourse and the perception of migration realities could be. Given such an example it seems to be clear that there is not one homogenous group of migrants and one history of migration. Headlines in newspapers or official and regulatory examples show in contrast to this the totally different way to look at these people from the point of view of mainstream society and the state.
Although, not being destined explicitly as an intercultural practise the making of the exhibition made it an actual intercultural practise because it contained such a lot of contributions from people with different ethnical backgrounds. This appears in the composition of the organisation and management team, the (not only) migrant youth projects as well as in the single contributions to the exhibition itself. After all, it was the intention to show the migrant as a subject which is the basis of every good intercultural practise.
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