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A man’s death, an international outbreak,a bunch of conspirators, 

secret societies, prophetic dreams, curses, a sandwich, a white deer, and a car : how Franz Ferdinand was meant to die.

 

‘A man’s death, an international outbreak, a bunch of conspirators, secret societies, prophetic dreams, curses, a sandwich, a white deer, and a car : how Franz Ferdinand was meant to die.’ is a mise-en-scène of the elements of our investigation about the circumstances surrounding the event which marked the beginning of the First World War: the assassination of  Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

 

This work stems from an observation, a sentence heard time and time again at school: Franz Ferdinand is killed in Sarajevo, it is the beginning of WWI.

How can the death of a man become the war of a world? Repeating this sentence has rendered it mythical, affording us the opportunity of a new investigation a hundred years after the facts, by means of diverse sources: ranging from the National library of Austria in Vienna to conspiracy forums, from military documents to family narratives.

Through this time-based distance, we confronted the gap between historical facts and their interpretation: the objectivity as wished for by the historian and the popular legends then create a different perspective on History a century later.

 

 

So this title reflects this investigation which led us through the meanders of History as an invention of Mankind, as a narrative. This narrative is staged in an office which brings together the elements of this investigation, and questions the fictional devices of representation of the investigation in today's society.

 

The installation was set up for the exhibition organised by Quartier 21 to mark the 100th anniversary of the First World War, and took place at the Quartier21 Freiraum in Vienna, Austria.