Street = Street?
Nafez Rerhuf’s illustrated street index of vienna 20
By Natalie Lettner
Street = Street? You contemplate and observe your surroundings. After some time you think: Ah, street, the people say, something straight, day-bright, serves as something to move along on. And you immediately experience a colossal sense of superiority, just like a visionary among the blind. You say to yourself: I know most certainly that a street is not something straight and day-bright, but rather that it can just as well be in comparison something with multiple branches, filled with secrets and riddles, with traps and underground passageways, hidden prisons and buried churches. […] Then, you contemplate: how can it be that the other people don’t realise it.
Robert Musil, Diaries, around 1900
Just like Robert Musil, Nafez Rerhuf knows that streets are not merely something “straight or day-bright”. He tempts the observer to take an unusual look at the street and, thus, the city using a camera that focuses on one small detail in the picture, while the rest of the scene remains blurred. He guides our attention to areas that are usually overlooked or dismissed: surprising architectural elements, astonishing perspectives, fascinating formal compliances, but also litter arranged into a melancholic still life in the gutter purely by coincidence.
An alphabetic street directory is natural, a photographic street directory, on the other hand, extraordinary – in spite of such things as Google Street View. Nafez Rerhuf has created an illustrated street index for one entire Viennese district. He chose Brigittenau, the district he knew least about and which is hidden away from all the tourists. To explore this mainly unknown network of streets was a challenge. He followed a clear concept and walked the entire length of all the 107 streets, lanes, roads, quays, squares and footbridges – in search of a, his motif. Intuition played a major role in this endeavour, but so did his knowledge of history.
Objets trouvés
Again and again, Nafez Rerhuf discovered quite surprising things on his walkabouts, things that – isolated by his artistic, photographic eye – become poetical treasures. On Wexgasse, three yellow and three red vertical lines capture his attention. Two umbrellas and – ? What are these red and yellow T-shaped bars growing out of concrete in front of a house? If you know that there is a tram depot in Wexgasse, you may be able to solve this riddle. The levers are used to switch the tram points by hand; the umbrellas allow for this to be done in inclement weather. In a way, these rather prosaic objects become a surrealistic objet trouvé in Rerhuf’s photograph. To the surrealists, this term meant the combination of objects that did not belong together, arranged by pure coincidence. After some time, they did not confine themselves to finding such objects by chance and put them into an artistic context anymore, but began to create these objects themselves actively, such as the famous Aphrodisiac Telephone (1936) by Salvador Dalí, a composite of a lobster and a telephone – this object had not been “trouvé” in the everyday sense anymore, but from within his own unconscious. The surrealists interpreted Lautréamont‘s famously iconic metaphor of “the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on an operating table”1 from The Songs of Maldoror from 1869, as a literary anticipation of their concept of the objet trouvé and the ideal description of the creative process. In Nafez Rerhuf’s picture, umbrellas encounter levers. While Surrealism was mainly focused on the irrationalism resulting from coincidence and/or the freed unconscious, Rerhuf’s perspective of the motifs he discovers encapsulates social reality. These are not surrealist, but realistic objet trouvés, however, they allow for a new, shifted perspective on reality. Such is also the case with the object of Rerhuf’s lens in Friedrich Engels Platz, which appears rather surrealistic at first glance: two huge bags with empty aluminium cans in a tipped over shopping trolley, which has a broken wooden chair stuck in it and — oddly enough — the backrest of an old car seat fixed to its front, almost like some kind of bumper. This construction surely must have had a purpose for its assumedly homeless owner, although it remains hidden in Rerhuf’s photo.
Even if someone airs his outdoor sandals on spikes meant to scare off pigeons in a window on Wehlistraße, it creates a seemingly surreal – although, in fact — practical, real and easy to explain composition. However, at a second glance, the observer begins to wonder: the tiny window has no glass pane, but is covered with a plastic sheet. Is someone living there? Is this a window from a cellar or corridor? Why is there no glass? How long have those brand spanking-new looking sandals been there? The act of looking becomes a creative exercise in this street index, not only for the photographer, but also for those looking at the pictures.
A rolled up school geography map dominates the picture of Romanogasse. It extends diagonally into the photograph, from an invisible though possible to sense rubbish bin, with its bright red frame from which it once had hung in a classroom. Mountain-rich Eastern Siberia, including the Kamchatka peninsula and the deep blue Bering Straits can be recognised at a closer look, a contrast to the blurred tarmac of Brigittenau. Why was that map thrown away and why now? It probably still shows the former Soviet Union’s old borders from more than two decades ago. Was the school unable to afford a new one? Or had the map stopped being used long ago and a Russian janitor kept it for sentimental reasons and now decided that it was time to cut all ties with the past? Or is it something completely different? Did the map come from the Muslim primary school in Romanogasse, which had made the headlines because of controversial educational content and was eventually shut. Rerhuf’s pictures evoke a branched network of associations and questions that can be turned into a short narrative. Not a full narrative, but one or several open-ended stories. To get back to Musil: in The Man Without Qualities he contrasts the factual sense of reality with a sense of possibilities as an alternative, “…a fire, a soaring, a readiness to build and a conscious utopianism that does not shrink from reality, but sees it as a project, something yet to be invented”2. Rerhuf’s photos also provide space for this kind of sense of possibility to develop, but not without insisting on the reality found at the same time.
Other objets trouvés have something of a memento mori: the dead blue tit on Innstraße probably the most. It lies there on the tarmac that is animated by light and shadow in a way that makes it appear as though it is almost enveloped in a halo. The cigarette end nex to it creates a compositional and content-related juxtaposition, putting the pathos into perspective. The skeleton of a wheelchair stands next to a rubbish bin on Donaueschingengasse: the former mobility support has become an invalid itself. Those knowing Brigittenau also know that this street is the home of Lorenz Böhler Hospital. And there we have another story-producing associative circle on the fate of this wheelchair and its former owner. On Lorenz Müller Gasse the lone, black boot creates a rather innocent impression at first glance until you discover the second one, somewhat hidden in the bushes: this is the moment when the scene becomes slightly eerie, maybe even a bit criminological, as that second shoe could still be on the foot of a person hiding there.
Rehruf’s attention is often drawn by formal or colourful surprises, such as the amazing interplay between the walls of buildings and the clothes of a passing couple on Hartlgasse. Coincidence and the eye of the photographer have conjured up an orgy of orange-yellow and turquoise-blue stripes from the textiles and plaster. Or on Hellwagstraße: where the red graffiti on the building’s wall is emulated in the Citybike logo and vice versa. The counterweight of a boom barrier, a bright red rectangle, which Rerhuf moves into the foreground, communicates with the balconies of the same colour set against the white backdrop in Spielmanngasse. At first, it is reminiscent of the suprematist pictures of El Lissitzky, but there are those green areas that are typical of council-house buildings mixing into this abstract composition, such as the bush at the front right that glows in wine-red, completing this play on the colour red. Hopsagasse, on the other hand, becomes a rhapsody in grey through the artist’s eye – Shades of Grey.
Rerhuf’s objets trouvés can produce very poetic pictures. For example, when the camera lens focuses on a piece of cloth fluttering from a window in Bäuerlegasse. As an appealing colour contrast, there is the opposite of the totally different — but in both cases — structured surfaces: the soft, absorbent honeycomb fabric of the pink cloth in contrast to the rough plaster of the grey wall. Simultaneously, the lattice design of the cloth is repeated in the privacy glass of the window below. Many of the photos have abstract qualities: planes collide, lines cross, colours and shapes communicate – however, in this case Kandinsky’s Point and Line to Plane meets the social reality of a suburban district of Vienna.
Inside / Outside
The walls of buildings are a key element in numerous photos. They mark the border between inner and outer space, between privacy and public. Rerhuf’s camera targets the point where the two worlds intersect, on the liminal area where they meet, overlap or separate. Windows and doors form the epitome of the transition of the interior and the exterior. They have to meet the most contradictory requirements, being part of both worlds – the interior and the exterior sphere: on the one hand, they are expected to provide permeability – for people, goods, air and light – but they must also offer protection – from unwanted intruders, bad weather or heat. Some doors or windows convey a clear message: the gate in Gasteigergasse, for example, which is fitted with several locks and video surveillance equipment, signalling a strong desire for security. Rerhuf keeps his lens on the various lock, cover and cloaking devices. A window covered with sheets on Pappenheimgasse, for instance, or the multi-material installation of curtains, privacy film and window pane on Traunfelsgasse.
Despite all of this, the private extends into the public, the interior in the exterior – or vice versa. In Greiseneckergasse, Rerhuf discovers a pink cushion on a window sill that enables the occupants to keep contact with the
public sphere from their private space. At the same time, the cushion gives the scene a colour accent. It creates a an antithesis to the water-damaged grey facade with its peeling plaster and turns into a self-expression of privacy and comfort in contrast to the signs of deterioration in the outside world. Also the jar with sauerkraut on the window sill in Kluckygasse crosses the border between the city’s private and public space. The public invades the private sphere in other cases, as when a passerby leaves bits of bread on a window sill in Spaungasse, occupying the threshold between interior and exterior space. The last two photographs are good examples of the highly precarious and ambivalent roles that window sills have: they protrude into the public space of the street, but are not considered for public use.
Reflections repeatedly create a double-edged picture of the border between inside and outside. For instance, when the image of the leaves of a somewhat battered pot plant in a window in Adolf-Schmidl-Gasse is united with the reflection of a tree in the window pane, it seems to create a whole new plant. A parked car and a satellite dish are reflected in the glass door of a block of flats in Dietmayrgasse, while there is a wooden stool surprisingly behind the door – a detail that one immediately identifies as a private-sphere object that does not really belong in the semi-public domain of a stairway. Only seldom do the photos capture inner spaces and only when they are semi-public or public: in a launderette in Wasnergasse, in the retro-styled premises of the district offices of the Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) in Raffaelgasse and in the stairway of a house in Universumstraße, in which a road is also reflected, making inner and outer space almost impossible to distinguish between. Rerhuf’s lens is always pointed inwards from outside, never the other way round: his street index takes the perspective of the public space.
The photographer is fascinated by the ambivalence between inside and outside, opened and closed, uncovered and hidden. Many pictures show something that is simultaneously both opened and closed: defective barriers, damaged grates, half-closed doors. A rusty lattice bars a window in Heistergasse, but only halfway because it has been bent open. Behind it is a window with privacy glass, which is slightly open and only provides a fleeting look into one of Vienna’s many cellars, the secrets of which had better remain hidden anyway. In Marchfeldstraße a second door next to the front door also seems to lead inside. Yet taking a closer look, it becomes clear that this is the closed door of a gate that not only creates an exciting, formal play with vertical lines, but is also reminiscent of a paradox painting by Magritte.
Additionally, the people themselves and not only their symbols and belongings mediate between inside and outside or turn out to be crossers between both spheres in Rerhuf’s photos, such as the construction workers in Wolfsaugasse or the man on Leipziger Platz, who is about to get out of his car. Rarely, we can see them in full or in a frontal close-up, such as the old man in Rebhanngasse, who glances skeptically across his reading glasses through the barred window. More often than not, we can only see body fragments, as in Brigittagasse, where two legs in denims and pink socks dangle from the second floor window of a grey house. This picture is not threatening in any way. We do not fear that the child will jump, but there is a slight uncomfortable feeling, while the happy child’s feet animate the building’s dull wall. These are the ambivalences Nafez Rerhuf is searching for. In Hannovergasse, he succeeds in making a polyphonic composition of the hidden and the revealed: two women in black burkas, the epitome of the hidden and of the veiling everything intimate and private, stand in the street — the public sphere — while mannequins advertising pearly-white wedding dresses in a shop window nearby create an antithesis. However, this contrast is not quite as straight forward as it seems: after all, the wedding dress and its — admittedly transparent — veil also cover the bride from tip to toe. On the other hand, small, surprising details are visible from the deep black of the burkas: a smartphone at the ear of one of the two women, a bright pink stripe on the other woman’s trendy sneakers.
Sometimes, the people have a space forming character that changes the city’s abstract geometry into something lively, just like on Brigittenauer Lände, Leithastraße, Pasettistraße or Sachsenplatz, which is animated by a choreography of two young, jumping women. Michel de Certeau has defined walking in the city in a similar way: “(…) space is a practiced place. Thus, the street geometrically defined by urban planning is transformed into a space by walkers.” And: “Their intertwined paths give their shape to spaces. They weave places together. In that respect, pedestrian movements form one of these ‘real systems whose existence in fact makes up the city’. They are not localized; it is rather they that spatialize.”3
Typical? History
Are the motifs discovered by Nafez Rerhuf typical for Brigittenau? Will people from Brigittenau recognise their district in them? Yes and no. Most is only recognisable once you are prepared to pay attention to the unfamiliar or to look at familiar things from an unfamiliar angle. In general, it is the overlooked, peripheral, almost invisible that Rerhuf puts at the centre of his photographic street index. Many of the chosen motifs could be found in several cities and metropolises. Globalisation is not limited to the trendy shopping streets that all look the same from Hongkong to New York, but has also taken over the suburbs. The graffiti on buildings, bridge pillars or garage doors appear alike, just as the signs of decay and poverty have become international. Yet, there are numerous motifs that could only be found in Vienna and Brigittenau because they are embedded in the topography and history of this city and this district.
It is not a coincidence that Rerhuf’s lens focuses on the former synagogue in Kaschlgasse – one of the few in Vienna that were merely vandalized and plundered during the November Progrom in 1938 and not fully destroyed, most likely because it is incorporated into an entire building. The temple built in the Bauhaus Style in 1931/32 and which could seat 600 people, comprises the ground floor and the first floor, with flats in the floors above. The building was “Aryanised” in 1938. The new owner let a major part of the building to the Austrian Communist Party (KPÖ) after 1945. It was handed over to the local Jewish Community “Israelitische Kultusgemeinde” following a restitution process in 1956. The KPÖ remained a tenant and sublet parts of the building to Trachtenverein Schneidiger Hauer, which held its traditional costume dances there. The building was renovated in 1974 and a Swiss discount market moved in, followed by a supermarket chain in 1988. The premises have been empty now since 2009. Rerhuf’s photo concentrates on a small detail in the current façade of the former synagogue. On the window sill on the ground floor there is a crumpled piece of tin foil reflecting in the light, as well as other litter – a distant reminder of broken glass and devastation. In this case, the objet trouvé becomes a symbol of the past and of carelessness with history.
Contemporary Austrian history is also omnipresent in Meldemannstraße. The monumental building at number 27, a retirement home today, used to be a boarding house for men between 1905 and 2003, a shelter for the homeless that could take about 550 men. It was one of the most modern institutions of this kind in Europe, distinguishing itself from similar houses through its small, single rooms instead of mass dormitories and exemplary hygiene, among other things. The then 21year old Adolf Hitler moved in here in 1910 and stayed for three years. It was here that he painted his watercolours, discussed Georg von Schönerer’s radical, anti-Semitic theses and the political consequences of Mayor Karl Lueger’s death, who he had admired, with fellow occupants. Hubsi Kramar and Tina Leisch produced George Tabori’s Mein Kampf on these premises just before the shelter was closed in 2002, a play that charts Hitler’s journey from a failed art student and the anti-Semitic demagogue to his development into a mass murderer on stage in the form of a grotesque play. The observer can only vaguely see the façade of the former boarding house in the background in Rerhuf’s photo. His lens targets a car parked in the street and the row of sunlight-flooded grass in front of the car growing between the cobbles. By celebrating the highlighted grass, the artist draws the attention to another small detail — easy to overlook — that the car must have been parked here for some time. Thus, the car, which represents mobility par excellence, becomes a land guardian or gardener. The realisation that the most famous Austrian other than Mozart had lived here makes this picture the antithesis to the frequently invoked propaganda image of the “Reichsautobahnen” of the NS regime that were designed to give the people or “Volk” work and also unlimited mobility.
The Roman-Catholic parish church St. John of Capistrano – an architectonically interesting building from the 1960s with an originally undecorated wall of exposed concrete – is at the centre of Rerhuf’s interest in Forsthausgasse. However, in 1985 the façade was given a concrete relief by Erna al Chihade and Mostafa Ragab. And it is exactly this relief or its bottom half, to be more precise, that draws the photographer’s attention: “…salvation is in the cross” (“im Kreuz ist Heil”) is what the inscription cut-off slightly at the top of the picture tells us. Moreover, we can see the lower half of John of Capistrano depicted as rather military. The Franciscan Giovanni da Capistrano, whom the church is dedicated to, was an army leader, influential counsellor of several popes and inquisitor. His declared enemies included the Jews and he had already been known for his infamous, fanatical hate of Jews among his contemporaries. In 1453, Capistrano had all 318 Jews of Wrocław arrested for the alleged desecration of hosts and had them confess under torture. Forty-one were burned at the stake, while the others were expelled from the city, their belongings confiscated and their children baptised. Against this historical backdrop, the word “salvation” (which also resonates the fascist “Heil!”), which Nafez Rerhuf focuses on, and the aesthetics of the relief that reminds us of fascist ideals, creates a very disturbing overtone.
However, Brigittenau is less characterised by its ecclesiastical buildings, but by the City of Vienna’s public building programme. There is a total of 61 council blocks, many of which originate from the legendary period of “Red Vienna”, during the 1920s and 1930s, although quite a number of them were built from the 1950s onwards. Details from these buildings are featured repeatedly in Rerhuf’s pictures — for instance in Dietmayrgasse, Griegstraße, Kapaunplatz, Leystraße, Pasettistraße, Spielmanngasse or Stromstraße. Rerhuf does not set them up as “workers’ palaces” or “Ringstrassen buildings for the ordinary man”, but lets them appear only en passant. In Winarskygasse there is the Otto Haas Hof with 273 flats and the even more impressive Winarsky Hof, built between 1924 and 1926 — with 534 flats. Nafez Rerhuf does not give centre stage to the monumental façade of the council block and its enormous entrance, even though the architects included Josef Hofmann, Josef Frank, Oskar Strnad, Adolf Loos, Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, Oskar Wlach, Karl Dirnhuber and Peter Behrens — the “Who’s Who” of the then very progressive architectural scene. His camera focuses on a discarded piece of bric-a-brac, a table clock decorated with a banjo-playing eagle. Rerhuf has not only found another seemingly surreal object, but one that contrasts with the noble, modernist standards of the star architects of the surrounding buildings through its tackiness and shabbiness. At the same time, it is again a starting point for a possible narrative: the former owner separated from his eagle clock, but not light-heartedly – because of lack of space or because his new girlfriend hated the thing. He took it to the rubbish bins, but did not put it in. Instead, he put it where everyone could see it, on a pedestal, basically. Furthermore, he picked an inappropriate bin for his clock, recognisable due to its blue top, intended for recycling metal tins. He hoped that someone else would take in this outcast. Of course, you could tell a completely different story…
When Nafez Rerhuf puts a council block at the centre of his images, he does it from a specific perspective. His photo in Adalbert Stifter Straße does not echo the social housing plans of the 1960s in a realistic-factual manner, but as something broken again: as contorted reflections of the smooth mirror-like, cubist sculpture Figuration (1966/67) by Josef Schagerl, which dominates more than half of the photo. The other half is not in focus and, thus, blurred. The concentration is more on the edges of the sculpture and, thus, on the border between the two realities, so that the blurred left half is separated by a sharp line from the contorted-reflective right half. A surprising detail: sometimes, associations can be made between the name of the street or square and the object found by Nafez Rerhuf. Just in the street named after Adalbert Stifter, whose greatest works include the novella Bergkristall (Rock Crystal), the photographer discovers a reflecting, crystalline sculpture.
Is the street an open book or a secret? In Nafez Rerhuf’s pictures it is always both. He shows over and over again, how a street, a square or building wall can be designed aesthetically and changed by the public authorities, industry or the population, whether consciously or unconsciously. In his street index, we meet quaint, bourgeois front garden designs, graffiti, overwritten traffic signs, faded adverts and various manifestations of publicly funded art. There are quite a number of art projects and sculptures from the 1950s and 1960s in the 20th District, not least because of the high density of council blocks. The non-commissioned and ephemeral forms often begin a dialogue with that publicly funded art, compete with it, counteract or complement it. The bear sculpture by Matthias Hietz from 1962 on Brigittaplatz, for example, is not only the communication target for the fading remains of some light green graffiti, but also for three empty soda bottles, standing on the sculpture’s pedestal like miniature graces. In other cases, everyday objects become pieces of art, such as the large, unhewn boulders on Handelskai, which serve as a barrier and are fitted with reflectors and painted stripes for safety reasons – seen through Rerhuf’s camera a perfect readymade object. These are exactly the phenomena that captivate the photographer and he not only draws the attention towards them through the use of his lens, but also injects magic into them.
Magic Concrete
Nafez Rerhuf conducted his research in Brigittenau for over two months. In some exceptional cases, he returned to the motif several times to capture a specific light, an expressive patch of shade or a precise mood. This is how he manages to make a bush in Helgolandgasse shine almost mystically, among all the prosaic concrete blocks. Again and again he is on the lookout for interesting light phenomena: in Leystraße, where the sun and the view into the green animate the grey building wall; in Traisengasse where the shadows play in an abstract form on a wall.
In Dresdner Straße, the photographer creates awareness of the potential magic of a garage entrance. Right angles dominate at first glance: a black almost square on the left, reminiscent of Malevich, with two green rectangles inside, views into a courtyard. Additionally, the prohibition sign attached to the white wall on the right seems abstract — as Rerhuf moves it into the blurred part of the picture and keeps its message hidden from us, although it screams for attention with its iconic characteristics – its red frame, white background and black letters. Instead, the eye is drawn to the square, the black darkness, which has an astounding pull and in which not only the reflectors and bumpers of the cars produce lighting accents, but where stars flare up from time to time amazingly – these stars are actually reflectors sunk into the wall to show drivers the way. However, here they transform this cold garage space into a fairytale-like, nightly sky.
In Taborstraße the plastic tarpaulin on a building site merges with the Gründerzeit stucco over an entrance, forming a dynamic composition which reminds us of a flying wedding veil: urban romance. A delicate, red figure of light – fragmented and reflected through the slats of a window blind — is in the camera’s focus in Gerhardgasse, giving the grey background something of a mysterious feel: an ephemeral, ghostly sign competing with the blue graffiti in the foreground. Fallen fruit produce a decorative pattern on the tarmac of Vorgartenstraße and remind us of the fact that the street owes its name to a building directive from 1893, which stated that each house had to have a front garden.
Rerhuf’s almost tender use of the defective, dysfunctional and imperfect that he celebrates in several of his street pictures is remarkable: in Kampstraße, the plaster around an electricity box was renovated, but the new blue is not quite the same colour as the old one. The result is a mixture of blue in blue. Yet, this is not the end: this
imperfection encouraged a passerby to add some thin, white, calligraphic scrawling that seems to ask what had happened here. Rerhuf concentrates on the broken chain of a hydrant in Heinzelmanngasse, while a cable curling from the perfect Gründerzeit façade creates a picturesque scene on Petratschgasse. Its function remains a mystery. Similar to the rusty piece of wire protruding from an undefined piece of textile in Ospelgasse – one of the actually ugly, often overlooked details put at the centre by Rerhuf in his photos and turned into small urban and everyday sculptures through his lens, without aestheticizing them in a problematic way and without concealing the social reality hiding behind it. Arte povera in the 21st century.
The photo of Kapaunplatz brings all the previous aspects together, aspects that characterise Rerhuf’s illustrated street index of vienna 20. There is a pipe protruding diagonally from a hole in the building’s wall, just to disappear in the perfectly kept lawn – apparently an objet trouvé of the surrealist kind: in fact, though, an inexpensive solution for a problem, similar to the power lines fitted on the same wall a bit further back, just more absurd. Simultaneously, it is a variation on the dialectic idea of inside and outside: the line that actually comes from inside the façade and usually fulfils its task in secret has come out just like intestines spilling out of a body. In addition, the socio-historic context: the first monumental council blocks of Red Vienna were built in these streets in the early 1930s. During the Austro-Fascist and National Socialist period construction work was stopped and not continued before the 1950s under a Social Democratic mayor. That was the time when the council blocks on Kapaunplatz were built. Some renovation work, such as connecting district heating and adding elevators, was done in the early 1990s. More extensive renovation work is planned for 2016. We may assume that this unconventional pipe construction will disappear in the course of the restoration. The name of this square goes back to the civil engineer Franz Kapaun, who planned Vienna’s first gas works shortly before 1900 and developed a much-praised architectural solution for the city’s gas lighting. The street lamp in the back on the right of Rerhuf’s photo can be interpreted as reminiscent of this.
Addendum
I went out and looked for some of the streets and places depicted in Rerhuf’s photos about one and a half years later. Surprisingly, things have often not changed a bit or have changed completely. The seemingly ephemeral Kasperl puppet with a blue magician’s hat is still there on the balcony in Dammstraße. He appears in the foreground in Rerhuf’s picture over the monumental, blurred brick wall and seems nearly mischievous or rebellious. I found the blue, inflatable dolphin in Wallensteinstraße that is part of the goods in a toy shop, high above the pedestrians and which takes up the most part of the photo image. Other things seemed to be ephemeral or fleeting, even when I could not have guessed so. So, I ended up going up and down Streffleurstraße looking for the monumental, orange, glowing trout caviar in the ice tub, until I realised that this snapshot of reality no longer existed today. I could find the right location, but the bar is empty and the caviar no longer attracts people.
Rerhuf only gives one clue to the timing of his photos. He focuses on a building site road sign in Salzachstraße that creates a rough idea of the timing of his shoots: the parking ban is in place until 4th January 2014. Or is he deceiving us? After all the cardboard sign with the date is bent and cannot be read anymore, so has long since lost its validity status. Additionally, the pedestrian in the right of the picture is wearing shorts and a T-shirt and the trees in the background glisten in fresh green. This image was certainly not from January. The only possible conclusion: the photo was taken after 4th January 2014. Or is something else possible? A month-long parking ban that, let’s say, was already issued in June 2013? A cardboard sign that had already got bent in July? Rerhuf’s pictures conjure up such mental puzzles again and again. He looks for the city in these traces, tracks, fragments, scraps and superpositions. Stories are written into them that are not completely readable. But Rerhuf’s photos invite you emphatically to dream them up.
1 “(...) the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on an operating table”, Le Comte de Lautréamont from The Songs of Maldoror, The Cambridge Introduction to French Literature, Cambridge University Press, 2015, p. 185
2 Robert Musil: The Man Without Qualities, Picador Classics, 2011 p. 17
3 Michel de Certeau: The Practice of Everyday Life, University of California Press 1988, p. 117 and 97
Nafez Rerhuf’s illustrated street index of vienna 20
By Natalie Lettner
Street = Street? You contemplate and observe your surroundings. After some time you think: Ah, street, the people say, something straight, day-bright, serves as something to move along on. And you immediately experience a colossal sense of superiority, just like a visionary among the blind. You say to yourself: I know most certainly that a street is not something straight and day-bright, but rather that it can just as well be in comparison something with multiple branches, filled with secrets and riddles, with traps and underground passageways, hidden prisons and buried churches. […] Then, you contemplate: how can it be that the other people don’t realise it.
Robert Musil, Diaries, around 1900
Just like Robert Musil, Nafez Rerhuf knows that streets are not merely something “straight or day-bright”. He tempts the observer to take an unusual look at the street and, thus, the city using a camera that focuses on one small detail in the picture, while the rest of the scene remains blurred. He guides our attention to areas that are usually overlooked or dismissed: surprising architectural elements, astonishing perspectives, fascinating formal compliances, but also litter arranged into a melancholic still life in the gutter purely by coincidence.
An alphabetic street directory is natural, a photographic street directory, on the other hand, extraordinary – in spite of such things as Google Street View. Nafez Rerhuf has created an illustrated street index for one entire Viennese district. He chose Brigittenau, the district he knew least about and which is hidden away from all the tourists. To explore this mainly unknown network of streets was a challenge. He followed a clear concept and walked the entire length of all the 107 streets, lanes, roads, quays, squares and footbridges – in search of a, his motif. Intuition played a major role in this endeavour, but so did his knowledge of history.
Objets trouvés
Again and again, Nafez Rerhuf discovered quite surprising things on his walkabouts, things that – isolated by his artistic, photographic eye – become poetical treasures. On Wexgasse, three yellow and three red vertical lines capture his attention. Two umbrellas and – ? What are these red and yellow T-shaped bars growing out of concrete in front of a house? If you know that there is a tram depot in Wexgasse, you may be able to solve this riddle. The levers are used to switch the tram points by hand; the umbrellas allow for this to be done in inclement weather. In a way, these rather prosaic objects become a surrealistic objet trouvé in Rerhuf’s photograph. To the surrealists, this term meant the combination of objects that did not belong together, arranged by pure coincidence. After some time, they did not confine themselves to finding such objects by chance and put them into an artistic context anymore, but began to create these objects themselves actively, such as the famous Aphrodisiac Telephone (1936) by Salvador Dalí, a composite of a lobster and a telephone – this object had not been “trouvé” in the everyday sense anymore, but from within his own unconscious. The surrealists interpreted Lautréamont‘s famously iconic metaphor of “the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on an operating table”1 from The Songs of Maldoror from 1869, as a literary anticipation of their concept of the objet trouvé and the ideal description of the creative process. In Nafez Rerhuf’s picture, umbrellas encounter levers. While Surrealism was mainly focused on the irrationalism resulting from coincidence and/or the freed unconscious, Rerhuf’s perspective of the motifs he discovers encapsulates social reality. These are not surrealist, but realistic objet trouvés, however, they allow for a new, shifted perspective on reality. Such is also the case with the object of Rerhuf’s lens in Friedrich Engels Platz, which appears rather surrealistic at first glance: two huge bags with empty aluminium cans in a tipped over shopping trolley, which has a broken wooden chair stuck in it and — oddly enough — the backrest of an old car seat fixed to its front, almost like some kind of bumper. This construction surely must have had a purpose for its assumedly homeless owner, although it remains hidden in Rerhuf’s photo.
Even if someone airs his outdoor sandals on spikes meant to scare off pigeons in a window on Wehlistraße, it creates a seemingly surreal – although, in fact — practical, real and easy to explain composition. However, at a second glance, the observer begins to wonder: the tiny window has no glass pane, but is covered with a plastic sheet. Is someone living there? Is this a window from a cellar or corridor? Why is there no glass? How long have those brand spanking-new looking sandals been there? The act of looking becomes a creative exercise in this street index, not only for the photographer, but also for those looking at the pictures.
A rolled up school geography map dominates the picture of Romanogasse. It extends diagonally into the photograph, from an invisible though possible to sense rubbish bin, with its bright red frame from which it once had hung in a classroom. Mountain-rich Eastern Siberia, including the Kamchatka peninsula and the deep blue Bering Straits can be recognised at a closer look, a contrast to the blurred tarmac of Brigittenau. Why was that map thrown away and why now? It probably still shows the former Soviet Union’s old borders from more than two decades ago. Was the school unable to afford a new one? Or had the map stopped being used long ago and a Russian janitor kept it for sentimental reasons and now decided that it was time to cut all ties with the past? Or is it something completely different? Did the map come from the Muslim primary school in Romanogasse, which had made the headlines because of controversial educational content and was eventually shut. Rerhuf’s pictures evoke a branched network of associations and questions that can be turned into a short narrative. Not a full narrative, but one or several open-ended stories. To get back to Musil: in The Man Without Qualities he contrasts the factual sense of reality with a sense of possibilities as an alternative, “…a fire, a soaring, a readiness to build and a conscious utopianism that does not shrink from reality, but sees it as a project, something yet to be invented”2. Rerhuf’s photos also provide space for this kind of sense of possibility to develop, but not without insisting on the reality found at the same time.
Other objets trouvés have something of a memento mori: the dead blue tit on Innstraße probably the most. It lies there on the tarmac that is animated by light and shadow in a way that makes it appear as though it is almost enveloped in a halo. The cigarette end nex to it creates a compositional and content-related juxtaposition, putting the pathos into perspective. The skeleton of a wheelchair stands next to a rubbish bin on Donaueschingengasse: the former mobility support has become an invalid itself. Those knowing Brigittenau also know that this street is the home of Lorenz Böhler Hospital. And there we have another story-producing associative circle on the fate of this wheelchair and its former owner. On Lorenz Müller Gasse the lone, black boot creates a rather innocent impression at first glance until you discover the second one, somewhat hidden in the bushes: this is the moment when the scene becomes slightly eerie, maybe even a bit criminological, as that second shoe could still be on the foot of a person hiding there.
Rehruf’s attention is often drawn by formal or colourful surprises, such as the amazing interplay between the walls of buildings and the clothes of a passing couple on Hartlgasse. Coincidence and the eye of the photographer have conjured up an orgy of orange-yellow and turquoise-blue stripes from the textiles and plaster. Or on Hellwagstraße: where the red graffiti on the building’s wall is emulated in the Citybike logo and vice versa. The counterweight of a boom barrier, a bright red rectangle, which Rerhuf moves into the foreground, communicates with the balconies of the same colour set against the white backdrop in Spielmanngasse. At first, it is reminiscent of the suprematist pictures of El Lissitzky, but there are those green areas that are typical of council-house buildings mixing into this abstract composition, such as the bush at the front right that glows in wine-red, completing this play on the colour red. Hopsagasse, on the other hand, becomes a rhapsody in grey through the artist’s eye – Shades of Grey.
Rerhuf’s objets trouvés can produce very poetic pictures. For example, when the camera lens focuses on a piece of cloth fluttering from a window in Bäuerlegasse. As an appealing colour contrast, there is the opposite of the totally different — but in both cases — structured surfaces: the soft, absorbent honeycomb fabric of the pink cloth in contrast to the rough plaster of the grey wall. Simultaneously, the lattice design of the cloth is repeated in the privacy glass of the window below. Many of the photos have abstract qualities: planes collide, lines cross, colours and shapes communicate – however, in this case Kandinsky’s Point and Line to Plane meets the social reality of a suburban district of Vienna.
Inside / Outside
The walls of buildings are a key element in numerous photos. They mark the border between inner and outer space, between privacy and public. Rerhuf’s camera targets the point where the two worlds intersect, on the liminal area where they meet, overlap or separate. Windows and doors form the epitome of the transition of the interior and the exterior. They have to meet the most contradictory requirements, being part of both worlds – the interior and the exterior sphere: on the one hand, they are expected to provide permeability – for people, goods, air and light – but they must also offer protection – from unwanted intruders, bad weather or heat. Some doors or windows convey a clear message: the gate in Gasteigergasse, for example, which is fitted with several locks and video surveillance equipment, signalling a strong desire for security. Rerhuf keeps his lens on the various lock, cover and cloaking devices. A window covered with sheets on Pappenheimgasse, for instance, or the multi-material installation of curtains, privacy film and window pane on Traunfelsgasse.
Despite all of this, the private extends into the public, the interior in the exterior – or vice versa. In Greiseneckergasse, Rerhuf discovers a pink cushion on a window sill that enables the occupants to keep contact with the
public sphere from their private space. At the same time, the cushion gives the scene a colour accent. It creates a an antithesis to the water-damaged grey facade with its peeling plaster and turns into a self-expression of privacy and comfort in contrast to the signs of deterioration in the outside world. Also the jar with sauerkraut on the window sill in Kluckygasse crosses the border between the city’s private and public space. The public invades the private sphere in other cases, as when a passerby leaves bits of bread on a window sill in Spaungasse, occupying the threshold between interior and exterior space. The last two photographs are good examples of the highly precarious and ambivalent roles that window sills have: they protrude into the public space of the street, but are not considered for public use.
Reflections repeatedly create a double-edged picture of the border between inside and outside. For instance, when the image of the leaves of a somewhat battered pot plant in a window in Adolf-Schmidl-Gasse is united with the reflection of a tree in the window pane, it seems to create a whole new plant. A parked car and a satellite dish are reflected in the glass door of a block of flats in Dietmayrgasse, while there is a wooden stool surprisingly behind the door – a detail that one immediately identifies as a private-sphere object that does not really belong in the semi-public domain of a stairway. Only seldom do the photos capture inner spaces and only when they are semi-public or public: in a launderette in Wasnergasse, in the retro-styled premises of the district offices of the Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) in Raffaelgasse and in the stairway of a house in Universumstraße, in which a road is also reflected, making inner and outer space almost impossible to distinguish between. Rerhuf’s lens is always pointed inwards from outside, never the other way round: his street index takes the perspective of the public space.
The photographer is fascinated by the ambivalence between inside and outside, opened and closed, uncovered and hidden. Many pictures show something that is simultaneously both opened and closed: defective barriers, damaged grates, half-closed doors. A rusty lattice bars a window in Heistergasse, but only halfway because it has been bent open. Behind it is a window with privacy glass, which is slightly open and only provides a fleeting look into one of Vienna’s many cellars, the secrets of which had better remain hidden anyway. In Marchfeldstraße a second door next to the front door also seems to lead inside. Yet taking a closer look, it becomes clear that this is the closed door of a gate that not only creates an exciting, formal play with vertical lines, but is also reminiscent of a paradox painting by Magritte.
Additionally, the people themselves and not only their symbols and belongings mediate between inside and outside or turn out to be crossers between both spheres in Rerhuf’s photos, such as the construction workers in Wolfsaugasse or the man on Leipziger Platz, who is about to get out of his car. Rarely, we can see them in full or in a frontal close-up, such as the old man in Rebhanngasse, who glances skeptically across his reading glasses through the barred window. More often than not, we can only see body fragments, as in Brigittagasse, where two legs in denims and pink socks dangle from the second floor window of a grey house. This picture is not threatening in any way. We do not fear that the child will jump, but there is a slight uncomfortable feeling, while the happy child’s feet animate the building’s dull wall. These are the ambivalences Nafez Rerhuf is searching for. In Hannovergasse, he succeeds in making a polyphonic composition of the hidden and the revealed: two women in black burkas, the epitome of the hidden and of the veiling everything intimate and private, stand in the street — the public sphere — while mannequins advertising pearly-white wedding dresses in a shop window nearby create an antithesis. However, this contrast is not quite as straight forward as it seems: after all, the wedding dress and its — admittedly transparent — veil also cover the bride from tip to toe. On the other hand, small, surprising details are visible from the deep black of the burkas: a smartphone at the ear of one of the two women, a bright pink stripe on the other woman’s trendy sneakers.
Sometimes, the people have a space forming character that changes the city’s abstract geometry into something lively, just like on Brigittenauer Lände, Leithastraße, Pasettistraße or Sachsenplatz, which is animated by a choreography of two young, jumping women. Michel de Certeau has defined walking in the city in a similar way: “(…) space is a practiced place. Thus, the street geometrically defined by urban planning is transformed into a space by walkers.” And: “Their intertwined paths give their shape to spaces. They weave places together. In that respect, pedestrian movements form one of these ‘real systems whose existence in fact makes up the city’. They are not localized; it is rather they that spatialize.”3
Typical? History
Are the motifs discovered by Nafez Rerhuf typical for Brigittenau? Will people from Brigittenau recognise their district in them? Yes and no. Most is only recognisable once you are prepared to pay attention to the unfamiliar or to look at familiar things from an unfamiliar angle. In general, it is the overlooked, peripheral, almost invisible that Rerhuf puts at the centre of his photographic street index. Many of the chosen motifs could be found in several cities and metropolises. Globalisation is not limited to the trendy shopping streets that all look the same from Hongkong to New York, but has also taken over the suburbs. The graffiti on buildings, bridge pillars or garage doors appear alike, just as the signs of decay and poverty have become international. Yet, there are numerous motifs that could only be found in Vienna and Brigittenau because they are embedded in the topography and history of this city and this district.
It is not a coincidence that Rerhuf’s lens focuses on the former synagogue in Kaschlgasse – one of the few in Vienna that were merely vandalized and plundered during the November Progrom in 1938 and not fully destroyed, most likely because it is incorporated into an entire building. The temple built in the Bauhaus Style in 1931/32 and which could seat 600 people, comprises the ground floor and the first floor, with flats in the floors above. The building was “Aryanised” in 1938. The new owner let a major part of the building to the Austrian Communist Party (KPÖ) after 1945. It was handed over to the local Jewish Community “Israelitische Kultusgemeinde” following a restitution process in 1956. The KPÖ remained a tenant and sublet parts of the building to Trachtenverein Schneidiger Hauer, which held its traditional costume dances there. The building was renovated in 1974 and a Swiss discount market moved in, followed by a supermarket chain in 1988. The premises have been empty now since 2009. Rerhuf’s photo concentrates on a small detail in the current façade of the former synagogue. On the window sill on the ground floor there is a crumpled piece of tin foil reflecting in the light, as well as other litter – a distant reminder of broken glass and devastation. In this case, the objet trouvé becomes a symbol of the past and of carelessness with history.
Contemporary Austrian history is also omnipresent in Meldemannstraße. The monumental building at number 27, a retirement home today, used to be a boarding house for men between 1905 and 2003, a shelter for the homeless that could take about 550 men. It was one of the most modern institutions of this kind in Europe, distinguishing itself from similar houses through its small, single rooms instead of mass dormitories and exemplary hygiene, among other things. The then 21year old Adolf Hitler moved in here in 1910 and stayed for three years. It was here that he painted his watercolours, discussed Georg von Schönerer’s radical, anti-Semitic theses and the political consequences of Mayor Karl Lueger’s death, who he had admired, with fellow occupants. Hubsi Kramar and Tina Leisch produced George Tabori’s Mein Kampf on these premises just before the shelter was closed in 2002, a play that charts Hitler’s journey from a failed art student and the anti-Semitic demagogue to his development into a mass murderer on stage in the form of a grotesque play. The observer can only vaguely see the façade of the former boarding house in the background in Rerhuf’s photo. His lens targets a car parked in the street and the row of sunlight-flooded grass in front of the car growing between the cobbles. By celebrating the highlighted grass, the artist draws the attention to another small detail — easy to overlook — that the car must have been parked here for some time. Thus, the car, which represents mobility par excellence, becomes a land guardian or gardener. The realisation that the most famous Austrian other than Mozart had lived here makes this picture the antithesis to the frequently invoked propaganda image of the “Reichsautobahnen” of the NS regime that were designed to give the people or “Volk” work and also unlimited mobility.
The Roman-Catholic parish church St. John of Capistrano – an architectonically interesting building from the 1960s with an originally undecorated wall of exposed concrete – is at the centre of Rerhuf’s interest in Forsthausgasse. However, in 1985 the façade was given a concrete relief by Erna al Chihade and Mostafa Ragab. And it is exactly this relief or its bottom half, to be more precise, that draws the photographer’s attention: “…salvation is in the cross” (“im Kreuz ist Heil”) is what the inscription cut-off slightly at the top of the picture tells us. Moreover, we can see the lower half of John of Capistrano depicted as rather military. The Franciscan Giovanni da Capistrano, whom the church is dedicated to, was an army leader, influential counsellor of several popes and inquisitor. His declared enemies included the Jews and he had already been known for his infamous, fanatical hate of Jews among his contemporaries. In 1453, Capistrano had all 318 Jews of Wrocław arrested for the alleged desecration of hosts and had them confess under torture. Forty-one were burned at the stake, while the others were expelled from the city, their belongings confiscated and their children baptised. Against this historical backdrop, the word “salvation” (which also resonates the fascist “Heil!”), which Nafez Rerhuf focuses on, and the aesthetics of the relief that reminds us of fascist ideals, creates a very disturbing overtone.
However, Brigittenau is less characterised by its ecclesiastical buildings, but by the City of Vienna’s public building programme. There is a total of 61 council blocks, many of which originate from the legendary period of “Red Vienna”, during the 1920s and 1930s, although quite a number of them were built from the 1950s onwards. Details from these buildings are featured repeatedly in Rerhuf’s pictures — for instance in Dietmayrgasse, Griegstraße, Kapaunplatz, Leystraße, Pasettistraße, Spielmanngasse or Stromstraße. Rerhuf does not set them up as “workers’ palaces” or “Ringstrassen buildings for the ordinary man”, but lets them appear only en passant. In Winarskygasse there is the Otto Haas Hof with 273 flats and the even more impressive Winarsky Hof, built between 1924 and 1926 — with 534 flats. Nafez Rerhuf does not give centre stage to the monumental façade of the council block and its enormous entrance, even though the architects included Josef Hofmann, Josef Frank, Oskar Strnad, Adolf Loos, Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, Oskar Wlach, Karl Dirnhuber and Peter Behrens — the “Who’s Who” of the then very progressive architectural scene. His camera focuses on a discarded piece of bric-a-brac, a table clock decorated with a banjo-playing eagle. Rerhuf has not only found another seemingly surreal object, but one that contrasts with the noble, modernist standards of the star architects of the surrounding buildings through its tackiness and shabbiness. At the same time, it is again a starting point for a possible narrative: the former owner separated from his eagle clock, but not light-heartedly – because of lack of space or because his new girlfriend hated the thing. He took it to the rubbish bins, but did not put it in. Instead, he put it where everyone could see it, on a pedestal, basically. Furthermore, he picked an inappropriate bin for his clock, recognisable due to its blue top, intended for recycling metal tins. He hoped that someone else would take in this outcast. Of course, you could tell a completely different story…
When Nafez Rerhuf puts a council block at the centre of his images, he does it from a specific perspective. His photo in Adalbert Stifter Straße does not echo the social housing plans of the 1960s in a realistic-factual manner, but as something broken again: as contorted reflections of the smooth mirror-like, cubist sculpture Figuration (1966/67) by Josef Schagerl, which dominates more than half of the photo. The other half is not in focus and, thus, blurred. The concentration is more on the edges of the sculpture and, thus, on the border between the two realities, so that the blurred left half is separated by a sharp line from the contorted-reflective right half. A surprising detail: sometimes, associations can be made between the name of the street or square and the object found by Nafez Rerhuf. Just in the street named after Adalbert Stifter, whose greatest works include the novella Bergkristall (Rock Crystal), the photographer discovers a reflecting, crystalline sculpture.
Is the street an open book or a secret? In Nafez Rerhuf’s pictures it is always both. He shows over and over again, how a street, a square or building wall can be designed aesthetically and changed by the public authorities, industry or the population, whether consciously or unconsciously. In his street index, we meet quaint, bourgeois front garden designs, graffiti, overwritten traffic signs, faded adverts and various manifestations of publicly funded art. There are quite a number of art projects and sculptures from the 1950s and 1960s in the 20th District, not least because of the high density of council blocks. The non-commissioned and ephemeral forms often begin a dialogue with that publicly funded art, compete with it, counteract or complement it. The bear sculpture by Matthias Hietz from 1962 on Brigittaplatz, for example, is not only the communication target for the fading remains of some light green graffiti, but also for three empty soda bottles, standing on the sculpture’s pedestal like miniature graces. In other cases, everyday objects become pieces of art, such as the large, unhewn boulders on Handelskai, which serve as a barrier and are fitted with reflectors and painted stripes for safety reasons – seen through Rerhuf’s camera a perfect readymade object. These are exactly the phenomena that captivate the photographer and he not only draws the attention towards them through the use of his lens, but also injects magic into them.
Magic Concrete
Nafez Rerhuf conducted his research in Brigittenau for over two months. In some exceptional cases, he returned to the motif several times to capture a specific light, an expressive patch of shade or a precise mood. This is how he manages to make a bush in Helgolandgasse shine almost mystically, among all the prosaic concrete blocks. Again and again he is on the lookout for interesting light phenomena: in Leystraße, where the sun and the view into the green animate the grey building wall; in Traisengasse where the shadows play in an abstract form on a wall.
In Dresdner Straße, the photographer creates awareness of the potential magic of a garage entrance. Right angles dominate at first glance: a black almost square on the left, reminiscent of Malevich, with two green rectangles inside, views into a courtyard. Additionally, the prohibition sign attached to the white wall on the right seems abstract — as Rerhuf moves it into the blurred part of the picture and keeps its message hidden from us, although it screams for attention with its iconic characteristics – its red frame, white background and black letters. Instead, the eye is drawn to the square, the black darkness, which has an astounding pull and in which not only the reflectors and bumpers of the cars produce lighting accents, but where stars flare up from time to time amazingly – these stars are actually reflectors sunk into the wall to show drivers the way. However, here they transform this cold garage space into a fairytale-like, nightly sky.
In Taborstraße the plastic tarpaulin on a building site merges with the Gründerzeit stucco over an entrance, forming a dynamic composition which reminds us of a flying wedding veil: urban romance. A delicate, red figure of light – fragmented and reflected through the slats of a window blind — is in the camera’s focus in Gerhardgasse, giving the grey background something of a mysterious feel: an ephemeral, ghostly sign competing with the blue graffiti in the foreground. Fallen fruit produce a decorative pattern on the tarmac of Vorgartenstraße and remind us of the fact that the street owes its name to a building directive from 1893, which stated that each house had to have a front garden.
Rerhuf’s almost tender use of the defective, dysfunctional and imperfect that he celebrates in several of his street pictures is remarkable: in Kampstraße, the plaster around an electricity box was renovated, but the new blue is not quite the same colour as the old one. The result is a mixture of blue in blue. Yet, this is not the end: this
imperfection encouraged a passerby to add some thin, white, calligraphic scrawling that seems to ask what had happened here. Rerhuf concentrates on the broken chain of a hydrant in Heinzelmanngasse, while a cable curling from the perfect Gründerzeit façade creates a picturesque scene on Petratschgasse. Its function remains a mystery. Similar to the rusty piece of wire protruding from an undefined piece of textile in Ospelgasse – one of the actually ugly, often overlooked details put at the centre by Rerhuf in his photos and turned into small urban and everyday sculptures through his lens, without aestheticizing them in a problematic way and without concealing the social reality hiding behind it. Arte povera in the 21st century.
The photo of Kapaunplatz brings all the previous aspects together, aspects that characterise Rerhuf’s illustrated street index of vienna 20. There is a pipe protruding diagonally from a hole in the building’s wall, just to disappear in the perfectly kept lawn – apparently an objet trouvé of the surrealist kind: in fact, though, an inexpensive solution for a problem, similar to the power lines fitted on the same wall a bit further back, just more absurd. Simultaneously, it is a variation on the dialectic idea of inside and outside: the line that actually comes from inside the façade and usually fulfils its task in secret has come out just like intestines spilling out of a body. In addition, the socio-historic context: the first monumental council blocks of Red Vienna were built in these streets in the early 1930s. During the Austro-Fascist and National Socialist period construction work was stopped and not continued before the 1950s under a Social Democratic mayor. That was the time when the council blocks on Kapaunplatz were built. Some renovation work, such as connecting district heating and adding elevators, was done in the early 1990s. More extensive renovation work is planned for 2016. We may assume that this unconventional pipe construction will disappear in the course of the restoration. The name of this square goes back to the civil engineer Franz Kapaun, who planned Vienna’s first gas works shortly before 1900 and developed a much-praised architectural solution for the city’s gas lighting. The street lamp in the back on the right of Rerhuf’s photo can be interpreted as reminiscent of this.
Addendum
I went out and looked for some of the streets and places depicted in Rerhuf’s photos about one and a half years later. Surprisingly, things have often not changed a bit or have changed completely. The seemingly ephemeral Kasperl puppet with a blue magician’s hat is still there on the balcony in Dammstraße. He appears in the foreground in Rerhuf’s picture over the monumental, blurred brick wall and seems nearly mischievous or rebellious. I found the blue, inflatable dolphin in Wallensteinstraße that is part of the goods in a toy shop, high above the pedestrians and which takes up the most part of the photo image. Other things seemed to be ephemeral or fleeting, even when I could not have guessed so. So, I ended up going up and down Streffleurstraße looking for the monumental, orange, glowing trout caviar in the ice tub, until I realised that this snapshot of reality no longer existed today. I could find the right location, but the bar is empty and the caviar no longer attracts people.
Rerhuf only gives one clue to the timing of his photos. He focuses on a building site road sign in Salzachstraße that creates a rough idea of the timing of his shoots: the parking ban is in place until 4th January 2014. Or is he deceiving us? After all the cardboard sign with the date is bent and cannot be read anymore, so has long since lost its validity status. Additionally, the pedestrian in the right of the picture is wearing shorts and a T-shirt and the trees in the background glisten in fresh green. This image was certainly not from January. The only possible conclusion: the photo was taken after 4th January 2014. Or is something else possible? A month-long parking ban that, let’s say, was already issued in June 2013? A cardboard sign that had already got bent in July? Rerhuf’s pictures conjure up such mental puzzles again and again. He looks for the city in these traces, tracks, fragments, scraps and superpositions. Stories are written into them that are not completely readable. But Rerhuf’s photos invite you emphatically to dream them up.
1 “(...) the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on an operating table”, Le Comte de Lautréamont from The Songs of Maldoror, The Cambridge Introduction to French Literature, Cambridge University Press, 2015, p. 185
2 Robert Musil: The Man Without Qualities, Picador Classics, 2011 p. 17
3 Michel de Certeau: The Practice of Everyday Life, University of California Press 1988, p. 117 and 97