The Resselpark on Karlsplatz in downtown Vienna provided the scenery for a temporary installation by Sissa Michelis and Peter Baur which questioned the notions of marriage, homeland, and habitation. A small wedding photo in a wooden frame was hanging in a small single-family house. The photo (of the two artists) had been taken at a highway restaurant. On a table, there was a photo album with Polaroids from the first year of marriage. An audio text read by a woman was coming in over the radio, based on an extract from Elfriede Jelinek’s novel Women as Lovers, though with the original verbs all replaced by the word “fuck.” Even if the loss of information appeared to facilitate new readings of the text, it was still resonant with stock gender stereotypes and wishful ideals from the world of Paula, an apprentice tailor, and Erich, a woodcutter. With this installation, everyday married life in the country was relocated to a park in downtown Vienna. Being part of the nomadic art world, the artists revealed their nostalgic wish for permanence and stability. The idea of a stable relationship became manifest as a desired fantasy. The marriage of a heterosexual woman and a gay man (Paula and Erich figuring as the artists’ alter egos) stood for the wish for a heteronormative way of living and was suggested as a tongue-in-cheek comment about the general gender discourse.

Text passage from Paulas Vorlieben (Paula’s Preferences)

however when erich at last fucks the clean kitchen of paula’s parents, engines in his heart, guglhopf cake and schnapps in his stomach, not a thing in his head, because he has fucked everything he was supposed to fuck, he has no memory at all of a living person, of paula, only a hazy memory of a woman, who fucked to him, what women have always fucked to him, that is, fucked him something to eat, fucked him something to eat, fucked him something to eat, fucked on him back and front, like a statue of a saint one fucks flower pots for. (after the translation by Martin Chalmers)