In February 2020, Kunst im öffentlichen Raum GmbH (KÖR) and the Vienna Anti-Discrimination Agency for Same-Gender and Transgender Lifestyles (WASt) launched a one-stage, invited artistic realization competition to obtain a design for the "Memorial to the Men and Women Victimized by the Persecution of Homosexuals in the Nazi Era" in Resselpark in the 4th district, which will be erected and maintained by the City of Vienna. The competition procedure was announced and carried out for eight invited participants. You can find all submission here: https://www.wien.gv.at/menschen/queer/wettbewerb-denkmal/

The evaluation committee met on 29 June 2020 and selected Marc Quinn's design as the winning project. On July 21, 2021, it was announced that the artist was withdrawing his design. It has been a difficult decision to make for the artist, who issued the following statement: “In the face of the current global disruption, and knowing the extent of what needs to go into realising the artwork’s complete concept, I sadly cannot say with any certainty when it will be possible to deliver it. It is with sadness, and out of deep respect for everyone involved, that I am withdrawing my proposal so Vienna can move forward with creating this important memorial.” (Marc Quinn) Further information on this is available in the press announcement (German only).

Winner of the competition: Marc Quinn - MEMORIAL TO THE MEN AND WOMEN VICTIMIZED BY THE PERSECUTION OF HOMOSEXUALS IN THE NAZI ERA

"According to the 2020 study "A long way to go for LGBTI equality. Sex, sexual orientation and gender" by the European Fundamental Rights Agency FRA, 86% of same-sex couples in Europe avoid going hand in hand in public places for fear of being insulted, threatened or violated. In Austria 78% avoid this.

Marc Quinn's sculpture depicts the moment of simplest and most elementary interpersonal contact. His design shows two pairs of hands lying tenderly on top of each other - on one side by two men, on the other by two women.

These pairs of hands seem to be chopped off at the wrists and thus convey the greatest brutality in the moment of loving touch.

The design reflects this ambivalence in aesthetic clarity and is striking on both an intellectual and emotional level.

Through the mirrored cut surfaces of the wrists and the tabletop, the viewer becomes part of the artwork and cannot avoid engaging with the depicted themes of same-sex love and its persecution.

This clear iconography convinced the jury to choose Quinn's sculpture as the winning design of the competition "Memorial to the Men and Women Victimized by the Persecution of Homosexuals in the Nazi Era"."

--Statement of the Jury

The artwork comprises two pairs of clasped hands - one the hands of two men; the other the hands of two women - cast in aluminum bronze with stainless-steel mirrors. These hands will be molded from the hands of two homosexual men and two homosexual women who will have been invited to participate in the project through an open call in Vienna. Their hands will be enlarged to one meter high and cast in aluminum bronze, and set upon a low handmade table whose polished stainless-steel surface forms a mirror. In turn, at the wrist of each pair of hands is a flat mirrored side in which the viewers will find themselves reflected.

At a distance, the artwork appears as one delicate silver form set amongst the trees in Resselpark. However, as individuals walk towards the artwork, they see the park, the city of Vienna and themselves reflected in its mirrors. In the busy atmosphere of Karlsplatz the monument creates a precious moment of contemplation as people pause upon seeing their reflected image and take time to consider the artwork and its history. Incorporating both ideas of fragility in its mirrored surfaces and endurance in its aluminum bronze, this piece is also a reminder of the vulnerability of human life, the precarity of human rights and the strength that can be attained through a collective coming together.

As the audience are drawn into the form of the work, they are invited to consider the way in which we are all part of history–both affected by it and holding the power to set its course.

Further competition entries:

Gelitin – Homo-monument

From the heads of the two embracing, kissing men and the two embracing, kissing women stands, as if grown from crystal, a glass obelisk. The obelisk is an isosceles prism, monolithically massive and fully cast of glass and closes with a triangular pyramid. It refuses any straight view through the glass.

Never go straight.

The view is mirrored, inverted and distorted. The transparent obelisk becomes visible by denying any direct view through it and by mirroring or inverting facets of its surroundings inside it. If you look across the straight surfaces of the prism, you see that the light consists of a spectrum of different colors.

One sees the Karlsplatz and people passing by in rainbow colors. One wishes then perhaps that the diversity in which we all live is also accepted in such a way, or notices at the same time that the own perception is a construct or which ways the thinking can take to the memory. For the joy of it, a passerby could kiss the obelisk, a kiss-o-lisk, pris-kiss, a kiss-o-ment or a kiss-memorial. The sculpture that encloses the kiss-o-lisk like a ring encloses its gemstone is carved by Gelatin in a skillful/unskillful manner from a light pink limestone.

Sometimes a ray of sunlight passes over the obelisk and a rainbow lights up on the Karlsplatz. At night, an additional light fixture mounted on the existing streetlight casts a narrow beam of light onto the prism, causing a luminous rainbow to appear on the asphalt.

Matthias Herrmann - Unter Freunden (Wiener Niedertracht) – Among Friends (Viennese Malice)

The proposal is to cover the entire area provided with a blue flooring. In the center is a 3 x 4.28 meter cube made of dark blue colored exposed concrete, which can and should be used as a stage for events.

A living moment will thus be inherent in the commemoration, or will rather be inscribed in it, the cube/stage should/may also be used, for example, by the students of the neighboring Technical University for their lunch breaks or other activities.

The eventual use as a STAGE (for schools, in the context of their city walks, for film screenings etc.) would be entrusted to QWien - a lively and active mediation seems to be essential if one wants to remember and commemorate this time and the horror.

On the cube stands a 175 x 50cm large blind mirror made of bronze, in which a term from the 5th chapter of Sigmund Freud's “Unbehagen in der Kultur” (“Civilization and Its Discontents”) (1930) is inscribed: HOMO HOMINI LUPUS - (freely translated: Man is man's wolf). Powdered, dried leaves of an oak tree, which still "guards" the path leading to the death staircase of the Mauthausen quarry, are mixed into the bronze used for the casting. This tree, which is about 170 years old, acts as a living witness to the calamity of the National Socialists.

Every Ocean Hughes – MEMORIAL TO THE MEN AND WOMEN VICTIMIZED BY THE PERSECUTION OF HOMOSEXUALS IN THE NAZI ERA

The design shows a set of forms that viewers are with, under, and through. This gathering, these arches, echo the ellipsis’ of the park, and reference an entrance, a frame, a stage, a triumphal arch, and a banner to march under. In devising these forms, the men and women homosexuals who defied social norms and found ways to connect at the risk of their lives are being honored. The language on these forms is an open and abstracted poetics that invites the viewer into the frame of the work by asking questions about life, accountability, and interconnectedness. With these formal and conceptual decisions, the artist strove to create an active work that knits the public into an affective relationship through form and language.

Every Ocean Hughes has worked to ensure that this memorial’s form and language speak directly to the call for the “Memorial to the Men and Women Victimized by the Persecution of Homosexuals in the Nazi Era” while simultaneously asking questions about agency, memorialization, and public art aesthetics. She designed this memorial to be a lively space the public can walk through and be with, the poetics gently guiding their thoughts to contemplative realms of aliveness and connection in the light of the lives that inspired this commemoration.

Susanne Lorenz – WIDER DIE NATUR

The work consists of a 3 x 10 meter stainless steel element with a strong mirror effect. It shows the framed lettering WIDER DIE NATUR (“Against Nature”). WIDER DIE NATUR is the literal excerpt from the paragraph § 129 I b which was the basis for the denunciation, persecution and imprisonment of homosexual men and women in the Nazi era in Austria. The reduction of the work to the lettering WIDER DIE NATUR challenges passers-by to reflect on its content.

Above a low concrete base, which also compensates for the slight slope of the square, WIDER DIE NATUR stands in Resselpark, taking up space and at the same time reflecting it. Due to the strong mirror effect on the front as well as on the back and the openness of the frame, the work takes up a strong interaction with the surrounding space. Nature and people are visible in front of and behind the frame and are permanently reflected in it: They are its "filling."

The writing confronts all people passing by and pausing with their own reflection and that of the entire surrounding space. "Colorfulness" is thus created by ephemerally reflecting people and things, the filling changes permanently and fluidly and does not create new categories, determinations or rigidities.

We are all addressed and stimulated to think by the many-sided associations and questions that the work can evoke: Who or what was "against nature." Those who were victims of the Paragraph or those who acted and executed according to the Paragraph, i.e. denounced, persecuted, accused, experimented, tortured and murdered? What is our own attitude towards this? Do we feel ourselves as a heterogeneous community, are really ALL part of the nature of our own world view, with all consequences, do we defend this?

Through its mirror effects and the permanently changing filling, to which ALL visitors always become themselves, the self-exposure of the words is as obvious as it is challenging. A one-sided reading, even affirming the intention of the perpetrators/persecuted/denunciators, is thus impossible. Rather, a view that changes in one's own bodily experience allows one to see AND feel the fundamental dangers of past, present, and future classifications and rigidities.

In its function as a monument, WIDER DIE NATUR guarantees a permanent unwieldiness (in the sense of personal challenge and current reflection) instead of a quick memorial reparation.

Martin Pfeifle – WINKEL

"Winkel" (triangels) recalls the stigmatization of the "abnormally predisposed," physically illustrates how it feels to stand on an unsafe ground, and creates a place for gatherings that takes up and appropriates prejudice.

The work "Winkel" stands on a pink rubber surface that echoes and appropriates Sven Ingvar Andersson's oval design in Resselpark. When passers-by cross the square, the first thing they notice is the different color of the newly created oval, which also stands out from its surroundings in terms of materiality. In the center of the oval are stacks of triangles that are lined up in a playful, associative form. The triangles consist of stacks of different heights and are cast in gold bronze.

In order to generate the identification of the LGBTIQ community with "Winkel", the sculpture is set up on site in Resselpark as a 1:1 positive made of Styrofoam before the bronze casting. In cooperation with formative organizations and groups of the Viennese LGBTIQ community, a happening will be organized on the positive, which will illuminate the historical anchoring of the monument as well as questions about queer life in the present. Through performances, lectures, discussions, etc., as well as sharing meals and drinks, the community appropriates "Winkel." Since Styrofoam is a soft and easily molded material, the Happening will leave traces on the material, making appropriation a part of the work. Following the Happening, the Styrofoam positive will be cast in bronze. "Winkel" creates a new space in the heart of Vienna, which invites to linger, reflect, remember, and create.

Stephen Prina - Threatening Danger, Fear, Catastrophe

The project takes the form of ten standard-issue lampposts, each fitted with an additional custom lighting fixture, and a kiosk with identification label. The lampposts are identical to the ones installed in the park except that they have been painted Honeysuckle Pink, thus functioning as assisted readymades. They both extend the project beyond the prescribed boundaries by association with all the lampposts in the park and present themselves apart from the already existing lighting by color differentiation, close massing together, and alternative programming. The arrangement of the lampposts closely follows the contours of the park, retaining the heart-shaped aspect of this plot of land. The lampposts hug the heart. This sentiment is irresistible.

The custom lighting fixture attached to the ten lampposts is modeled after a Wiener Werkstätte ceramic centerpiece that was in the collection of Bruce Goff (1904-1982), architect, composer, painter, United States of America. In 1955, as the result of being a victim of police entrapment, he was accused of endangering the morals of a minor—a coded way of stating that he had committed the crime of homosexuality.

“Threatening Danger, Fear, Catastrophe” is taken from Arnold Schönberg’s Accompaniment to a Cinematographic Scene (Begleitungsmusik zu einer Lichtspielszene) Op. 34, 1929-30, where these titles identify the three sections of the composition. Stephen Prina has located a melodic fragment at the beginning of the Coda, at measure 200 near the end of the composition, after the conclusion of the Catastrophe section. In this 24-second fragment, the melody is passed from flute to bassoon to oboe. He has isolated the rhythm of this fragment divested of its pitches and timbres as the program for the lighting sequence. After the 24-second sequence, the lampposts all illuminate simultaneously for 24 seconds. This becomes the continually alternating pattern of the work.