“Saisonstadt
oder Saison Opening”
Michael Zinganel
Hans-H. Albers
Maru¸sa Sagadin
Michael Hieslmair
Since private German employment agencies began in winter
1999/2000, in cooperation with the Austrian labour
market service, to recruit seasonal workers in the new German
states, more and more Germans are surging into the
Alps – in order to work where others are spending their
holidays. The project “Saison or Seasonal Opening” by
Michael Zinganel (cultural scientist, architecture critic
and artist, Vienna), Hans-H. Albers (architect and urbanist,
Graz), Maru¸sa Sagadin (artist, Graz) and Michael
Hieslmayr (architect and artist, Vienna) is based on interviews
about the experiences of those seeking employment,
of employment agents and employers. The mapping juxtaposes
a fictitious shrinking city in Eastern Germany as
the source region (of tourists and seasonal workers) and
an existent booming centre of tourism in the Tyrolean
mountains (Sölden located in the Ötz valley), in an associative
manner, as containers mutually filling and emptying
one another. It not only investigates the problems of
infrastructure management, in the face of extreme seasonal
variation, but also the relation of seasonal commuters
to their home. This relation is gradually transforming itself
from the everyday to the extraordinary of “touristy” image
and experience values. By way of the example of a small
restaurant, which was opened by a former seasonal worker
in her home country, it is shown how the transfer of culture
and know-how and the use of transnational social networks
of tourist subcultures may be concentrated in a productive
way, and how unforeseen opportunities for the
self-empowerment of the actors may emerge from heterogeneous
experiences of the tourists.
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