1070 UNSEEN – SIGNALS FROM OFFSTAGE

The home-based care provided by Caritas supports people who’re no longer able to leave their living spaces, people who are easily forgotten in the daily hustle and bustle of Vienna’s Neubau. The project team, after tracking the caregivers, read several mostly unknown and extremely personal stories along the well-known paths of the Focus District of Neubau and staged them by means of audio drama, advocaat, and Mon Chéri chocolates in a way that was equally insightful and charming. This provided a look at unknown living spaces and worlds for ten days, a special project in the form of a careful sampling of and respectful listening to the life stories of Ms. Sturm, Mr. Melcher, Ms. Chvala, et al., which will possibly be continued as a podcast.

As part of the VIENNA DESIGN WEEK, 1070 UNSEEN received the Erste Bank’s ExtraVALUE Design Award 2018: “The project successfully portrays with an equally empathetic and concentrated approach the work involved with Caritas’s home-based care, the living conditions of individuals who need this care, and life behind the facades of the 7th district. In it, the individuals become three-dimensional, their stories are tangible, and intimacy is created without putting anyone on display or crossing boundaries. The team approached the participants authentically, respectfully, and with a great deal of appreciation. The choice of the creative means provides support, the comprehensibility of the home caregivers’ presence at a certain point in time is moving, the set pieces that represent the stories are chosen just as intelligently as the audio material” was the statement that jury head Lilli Hollein read at the awards ceremony.