Hermann Czech was invited by the Austrian commissioner of the Venice Architectural Biennale, Hans Hollein, to make an installation, a statement on tolerance, along with Ben van Berkel, Zaha Hadid, Adolf Krischanitz, Greg Lynn, Thorn Mayne, and Jean Nouvel. The proposed site was Ballhaus Square in Vienna where the Chancellery and the palace of the Federal President stand opposite each other. Czech presented photomontages of this square with a fence built in it, in two identical arrangements, but with two different captions: "This is a playground" (referring to a former building for ball games of the imperial court, which gave the square its name, but also to the necessary tolerance for having a playground in a residential or representative area); and "This is a jail", a complex statement on tolerance because it referred not only to the problem of the then right-wing government in Austria, but actually to the broader problem of Schengen Europe.
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