Glory and Gloom. Living with the great war
Exhibition Design
Client: Schallaburg
Graphic: Fuhrer Visuelle Gestaltung
Curator: Peter Fritz, Christian Rapp, Wissenschaftliches Team
Conflict Laboratory: Zunder Zwo
Exhibition space: ca 1300m2
Location: Schallaburg, NÖ
Year: 2014
Team
Gerhard Abel, Oliver Cmyral, Daniel Trimmel, Dawit Kassaw
How can such an intense and all-encompassing event be represented at all?
War cannot be explicated, it is almost impossible.
At the start, you come into a dark room with illuminated panels. On each of these boards the conditions of a person from 1914 is presented. In the various thematic areas, one of these four persons re-appear, and at the end you meet them all again in 1918.
The exhibition tells the story of the Great War through the fates of these individuals.
Light vs. dark, the black and white rooms alternate, and these play of opposites reveal the initially blind enthusiasm behind the effort and it’s devastating outcome.
Spoiler Alert: THIS EXHIBITION DOES NOT HAVE A HAPPY ENDING.
War has a lot to do with optimising - the longer it takes, the more it is optimised. As this is an important point, we have expressed this optimisation in the materials we use— limited in number but used consistently. We deliberately made use of readily available materials and series production— just as it happens in times of war (such as the use of simple off-the-shelf industrial shelving). Another element used is steel, which is an obvious choice for the topic.
