Building Plot Required for a Mosque
Problematic Property
The church spire gets competition - at least in Telfs in Tyrol, where the first mosque with a minaret will be built in Austria. For some people, this problematic building was the reason for a cultural war, for others, a visible sign of religious tolerance. In another province, a commission has been set up to decide whether new architectural objects blend in with the local building culture. Against this cultural background, Johannes Porsch took up the theme and created a series of posters and advertisements in the print media entitled 'Building Plot Required for a Mosque'.
"How can something foreign be understood without assimilating it", the project leader comments on the fundamental issue of his project. The aim was not to find a concrete answer to this question, what was important was the question itself. "Concrete questions must be answered by politics, this can not be the task of art." The motives of this series of posters should generate astonishment, the ‘material' itself can be simple: Sometimes even a single letter suffices. Porsch also employed pictures that caused a public annoyance at the Cologne Carnival in 2008, when floats with mosques participated in the Fools' Parade. Humour was an instrument used to pierce convention, commented the project leader.