In the winter of 2007, a fictitious Dubai-based US company presented its product ValYou in Vienna for the first time: social upgrading as a service through participation in the elitist circle of the ValYou Corporation. The greater the distance from the goal, the higher the price: corresponding to the respective person’s social ranking, which was determined by means of a questionnaire, the price for lower classes was unaffordable, the price for VIPs comparatively cheap.
The firm was presented in Vienna’s first, sixth, and tenth districts. The cordoned-off area with a slick stage guarded by security forces conveyed the idea of a “value zone” promising an upgrade. Members of the company, played by the improvisational theater group “The English Lovers,” promoted the product and involved passers-by in conversations about their individual and their social value. The music for the setting was a Rhine Gold arrangement by Florian Schmeiser. Susanne Schuda presented the ValYou Corporation, its website, and its promotion material medially, virtually, and visually.
Oscillating between Situationist happening, media fake, and commercial mise-en-scène, the project entailed both artistic and theoretical investigations that manifested themselves in a publication. Two hundred hours of audio recordings provided the basis for this publication as well as for further texts on the subject by Irini Athanassakis and Wolfgang Pfaller. The Swiss artist Christa Ziegler developed a photographic essay on the project that visualized the real and social space and its protagonists.

Text: Florian Schmeiser