BLACK SPIRAL
RU

The Abyss

Installation / Art - an object on the site of the house of Adolf Hitler in Braunau am Inn. In collaboration with ICARCH Gallery (USA) for the Austrian government.

The project was presented at the Vienna Biennale 2017.
«After years of legal wrangling, the Austrian government will have the empty house demolished, Andreas Großschartner, an Interior Ministry spokesperson, said Monday.

"I agree with the commission that a profound architectural redesign makes sense to permanently prevent both the recognition and the symbolic value of the building," Interior Minister Wolfgang Sobotka said in a statement.» —
Margot Haddad and Rolando Zenteno, CNN

Firstly, we are deeply against the very idea of demolition or drastic disfigurement of the building.
Secondly, we are against slinging the mud at the dead people, even if the person in question is Adolf Hitler.
The Second World War is the result of the decisions (or indecisiveness) of all the major political leaders of that time. It is a direct result of what we now call "the multipolar world", the object of dreams of some of the modern politicians. The only valid association that any sane person has upon hearing about "the multipolar world order" is the two World Wars and the hundred millions of their victims.
The devastating war that engulfed Europe is a direct result of the coalition of the two totalitarian monsters — the Soviet Union and the Third Reich. However, while Nazism is commonly condemned and prosecuted, the communists, for some unexplainable reason, are still very alive and kicking.
Our idea is a combination of an architectural installation and a social project. The war is not finished until we bury the last victim thereof. The Second World War, according to some estimations, claimed the lives of approximately 70 million people, some of which are not even found, much less buried yet.
The concept of the project is to cover the building with black media facades. Every six seconds the name of another person, who died in that war, will flash on the screens. Only six seconds — for each year of the war. The broadcasting will continue for approximately 12 hours — during the daytime. Even so, it will take more than 30 years to go through the names of all the victims. Does not matter, whether they were civilians or soldiers. They were all the victims of that war.
During the nighttime, the screens will go black. A yawning pit. A Nietzschean abyss. If you are selfie-crazy — come and take one. Now, what will be there inside the building? Perhaps, a small museum, perhaps, a modest installation space for the exhibitions of the aspiring artists. Perhaps, the data center itself, the very heart of the project.
Social Part of the Project
To create a database (perhaps in addition to an already existing one), with the help of which any person, who has lost his or her relatives and friends during the war, could come and find them. The still-missing victims are also going to be added to the database as soon as they are found. In this way, maybe, by the centennial of those horrible events, we could be nearing the completion of this mourning list. The realization of this project will primarily need the strong political desire for its creation, as well as the help of the IT companies for the development of a special website and database.
This project was especially hard for us… Not in the part of the creation of the concept itself, but in that part where we had to delve into the essence of the problem. Galina Chiusova, grandmother's cousin of one of our team members had died, supposedly by starvation, in the sieged Leningrad (Saint Petersburg).