Ausländer raus - Schlingensiefs Container

Foreigners Out! chronicles one of the biggest public pranks and acts of art terrorism ever committed. In Austria in 2000, for the first time since World War II, representatives from an extreme right-wing party became part of the government. In response, infamous German shock director and artist Christoph Schlingensief decided to engage in a unique form of protest. In a bid to embody public xenophobia and the new hate politics in the most drastic way possible, he installed a public concentration camp right in the middle of Vienna’s touristic heart, immediately next to the famed opera house. A concentration camp that cynically reflected our new multimedia culture, Schlingensief’s provocative art project satirized reality-TV shows — Big Brother especially — by housing a dozen real asylum seekers in containers, surveilling them with a multitude of cameras, and allowing passers-by to feed and watch them. And every day, two of the refugees were chosen through web voting to be thrown out of country. (St. Louis International Film Festival)