What is the project specifically about?

So much hangs on just one thing - and yet words sometimes fail us. How do we talk about our bodies and the things that we need, want, and do when it comes to sex and sexual pleasure? And who do we talk to about these things? Categories to Come invites everybody to put their sexuality into words, and to discuss new words or new uses of words with other people. Goal of the project is to create a platform and gather resources, that open up so far unnamed subject areas of sexuality. They will be accessible both for personal gain and interdisciplinary research.

How can citizens participate in research?

Citizens are actively involved in shaping the future vocabulary of sexual language and provide important impulses for research. Citizens can write down their own terms and descriptions for intimate activities and their own sexual desire. They can also collect and name passages from songs, books or films that are sexually interesting to them. They can look at films and photos and other cultural works and describe what can be seen there and index them. They can read books and texts and filter out places with sexual acts and tag them.

What happens to the results?

The results form a resource to illustrate previously unnamed areas of sexuality. This data collection will be organized and made available as a database and can be used to enhance studies by researchers working in linguistics, social sciences, sexology, gender studies and literature as well as for art production.

What does the research contribute to?

Categories to come helps to build a new resource for research on sexuality in different disciplines. The project is based on two assumptions, namely, 1) the existing sexual vocabulary has only been partly described, and 2) because of sexuality’s visual nature, lack of language, and location within the realm of experience, there are many fantasies and sex acts that nobody has yet attempted to put into words. The project Categories to Come combines artistic and academic research interests. In contrast to purely scientific research, the artistic element also allows one to become creative and to create new words. Categories to come thus contributes to making research into sexual language and sexual desire more diverse.

This project shows what the artistic aspect can be in a research context, how it produces a different kind of knowledge than purely scientific research and how this can make a contribution in an interdisciplinary context. By making the results publicly accessible, citizens can use the database themselves and find new ways and terms to talk about sexuality. This counteracts tabooing and promotes a conscious discussion of one's own sexuality.

Image gallery

• "so much revolves around this one topic" "so much revolves around this one topic"
• "and still we sometimes miss words" "and still we sometimes miss words"
• Facebook header of the project Facebook header of the project
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This project fulfilled version 1.1 of the quality criteria for citizen science projects on Österreich forscht.

An Intergenerational Ethnography on Rural Images of Longing

Taking the unique photography collection of the Austrian Museum of Folk Life and Folk Art as its starting point, the research project “Stadt-Land-Kind” (City-Country-Child) investigated the myth of a “better life in the countryside” from an intergenerational perspective. In dialogue with social scientists, and in exchange with older generations of parents and grandparents, pupils conducted research into prevailing urban/rural sentimental and ideological constructions and the corresponding images and meanings they produce. The project asked about the social models and (future) promises that are deeply rooted in images of the idyllic countryside. What do we say and what do we feel when we connect these often backwards-looking pictures with our present-day life? On the one hand, the project’s objective was to deconstruct conventional notions of authenticity that are often used in today’s images of the countryside by touristic, commercial and political branding. On the other hand, by way of asking what images we use to “write” our history of the countryside, the project aimed to update rural conceptions through a critical investigation of historically and culturally constructed motifs of longing, as well as by an active-reflexive production of new images of the countryside.

For two years – the entire duration of the project – we conducted our research in close cooperation with three partner schools from three rural regions of Austria: Waldviertel, East Tyrol and Bregenzer Wald. The schools were the Primary School Rastenfeld (Lower Austria), the New Middle School Kals am Großglockner (Tyrol) and the Werkraumschule Bregenzerwald (Vorarlberg). This constellation included three age groups as well as three different types of schools. Overall, more than 100 citizen scientists participated in the project, including the pupils, their families and further local participants. This enabled us to differentiate age- and region-specific perspectives. During the collective field research and image analysis three different methods were applied: intergenerational picture talks, photo expeditions (these first two methods were specifically developed for our project), and research postcards in the tradition of historical ethnographic field research. During the intergenerational picture talks, pupils shared their personal memories and experiences – elicited by historical and contemporary images of the countryside – as well as their knowledge and conceptions of the future of country life with their parents and grandparents, teachers and neighbours. During the photo expeditions the pupils produced new images of the countryside depicting their personal perspectives on their rural environment, which allowed us to consciously counter current visual politics as is often seen in advertising and the like. 108 photographs and 50 postcards entered the collection of the Museum of Folk Life and Folk Art as contemporary documents.

Based on our manifold findings and visual-material productions, we curated the research exhibition Retropia: Talking about Rural Images of Longing, which was on display from April to June 2019 at the Museum of Folk Life and Folk Art in Vienna. The exhibition fostered an understanding of the research process with contributions by the pupils. The Top Citizen Science expansion project, “Stadt-Land-Bild. A Social Image Analysis of Contemporary Conceptions of Longing,” continued our research with visitors in the exhibition space.

The exhibition illustrated our core finding that a new longing for the countryside is a highly relational phenomenon. Fantasies of a good life in the countryside are not necessarily linked to certain geographical regions, places or locations. Far more, they are shaped by biographical experiences and actual life conditions that come into play when talking about images in a multi-sensory and multi-perspectival way. Longing for the countryside particularly presented itself as an alternate construction to a person’s everyday life and to the present time. When comparing the different generations, parents seemed to have a strong desire for quietude and slowing down. Too, sensory-physical memories like handicrafts or hiking proved to be a strong reference to the country life for members of all generations. While these leisure activities are usually fun for the pupils, some members of the grandparent generation reacted to historical photographs with memories of times of deprivation; this introduced a critical perspective towards the “good old days.”

The different points of view and stories gathered from the Intergenerational Picture Talks, combined with the experiences from the active-reflexive image production with the pupils through photo expeditions and postcard workshops, brought about new and multilayered perspectives and insights for us. The impetus for educational policy resided in the exploration of an open concept of Heimat (“home”) and the enhacement of visual literacies among pupils and their families. There is scientific benefit to be gained from empirically observing today’s manifestation of the usually vaguely discussed phenomenon of longing for the countryside. Differentiation was achieved by content analysis as well as visual-material analysis.

Team:

Martina Fineder, Paul Reiter (Academy of Fine Arts Vienna)
Luise Reitstätter, Mark Elias Napadenski (University of Vienna)
Herbert Justnik, Astrid Hammer, Katharina Zwerger-Peleska (Austrian Museum of Folk Life and Folk Art)
Iris Ranzinger (photography, digital images, archive)

Project duration & project partners:

“City-Country-Child” was a project of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in cooperation with the Laboratory for Cognitive Research at the University of Vienna, the Austrian Museum of Folk Life and Folk Art, the Werkraum Bregenzerwald, the Primary School Rastenfeld, the New Middle School Kals am Großglockner and the Werkraumschule Bregenzerwald. It ran from 1 September 2017 until 31 October 2019. It was conducted through the grant program Sparkling Science, funded by the Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research.

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This project fulfilled version 1.1 of the quality criteria for citizen science projects on Österreich forscht.