A collaboration between Parrhesia, Zochrot and Ursula Hofbauer
Through Language is a public art project, a visual dictionary and site-specific glossary alternating between Arabic, German and Hebrew.
Giving the Arabic and the Hebrew languages presence in the public sphere in Europe evoke issues relating to the presence of our cultures within Europe, in the past as well as in the present .
We hope to question the tendencies of the Western world to perceive Arabic and Hebrew languages and cultures as threats and thus refer to the constant uprising of xenophobia and Anti-Semitism in Europe. The project also proposes language and culture as an arena for listening and engaging in dialogue with others.
AugartenStadt was not chosen by chance; as "verlorene Insel (lost island)" was the main scene of Jewish displacement in 1938 – and as a site of new migration, it is the space of current conflicts between populism, xenophobia and Muslim self-assertion.