On May 7, 2010, a new permanent venue for art in public space was inaugurated in one of the most central places of Vienna, the Graben. After Cosima von Bonin staged her installation TAGEDIEB (IDLER) as the first work there, a new project has been presented in this context every year.
The six-meter high installation in white on the Graben worked with quotations from popular or everyday cultural contexts and changed their original meaning by connecting various connotations with each other in a collage-like manner. The figure perching on a raised seat, which presented itself as something between an umpire’s chair and an observation platform, made people immediately think of Pinocchio because of its enormously elongated nose. At the end of the nose, grown long through lies, a spider dangled on a thread. Furnished with a motion sensor, a lily-of-thevalley lamp (like the ones embellishing the entire Graben area) illuminated the scene from behind.
By choosing the title TAGEDIEB (IDLER), Cosima von Bonin suggested a certain understanding of her work: the little good-for-nothing perching on the raised seat in the middle of the consumption binge boulevard in the center of the city was idly observing the hustle and bustle in the streets below. He not only stole the days by doing nothing but, sitting there and watching what was going on, did not consume anything, was no “good citizen,” and lied on top of it – as his long nose clearly revealed.
Bonin used the chosen props and their material character with the greatest of ease in order to make an immediately perceptible aesthetic statement; at the same time, the mélange of elements lacking any a priori context of meaning created a microcosm evading any final definite interpretation.
Since the good-for-nothing was a both familiar and foreign figure within the historical/historicist ensemble, he could become everyone’s accomplice as his presence oscillated between irritation, closeness, and seduction.

Text: Matthias Herrmann