The project “Speicher für Geschichten” – a repository for stories was created in the year 2005. The year 2005 was a commemorative year in Austria. 1945, 1955 and 1995 are key years in Austrian history: in 1945 the war ended, in 1955 the occupation of Austria ended and the present constitution was adopted, and in 1995 Austria became a member of the European Community. The idea of the repository was to collect oral history and conserve it in a time capsule for coming generations. The hidden idea behind was that normally “Big Days” are only celebrated in the political, historical and social centres of the main cities, not in peripheral and marginalised zones whose inhabitants seldom get the opportunity to tell their stories and their memories of important dates and events. The idea was to bring these previously unknown oral stories to a main public place in Vienna. Four shipping containers where welded together and transported to three main public places in the outskirts of Vienna to collect stories and ideas of ‘common’ people. After three months, the collection of stories and the project was presented at the “Karlsplatz” in front of the Wien Museum in central Vienna. A white cube was built in which the stories were displayed. Each story was also saved on a central server. Each person was represented by a photograph and a personal item (like a key or a piece of clothing). A RFID chip card was attached to the personal item. The visitors were invited to walk through a hanging garden of individual stories. By connecting the HP-IPOQ Reader to the RFID Card the stories were played over earphones to the visitor.
