A GOOD DAY

Interactive Installation w/ sound, 1920×1080
Projections, camera and sensors
Jewish Museum, Vienna, 2014

This interactive installation was one of the first collaboration works by Andrew Mezvinsky and the media art collective lichterloh exhibited at Jewish Museum Vienna & Austrian Cultural Forum New York and Washington as well as festival of tolerance in Zagreb (Croatia).

Based on Primo Levi’s account of survival in Auschwitz „A Good Day“ was created for the Museum Judenplatz in Vienna. In the book If This Is A Man? (Se questo è un uomo) the Italian Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi (1919–1987) summa-rizes his traumatic experiences. One of the chapters in Levi’s account describes a “good day.” 

“A Good Day” – the ironic title chosen by Primo Levi and refers to the first rays of sun in Auschwitz and the hope for survival that they represent: “The rising of the sun is commented on every day: today a little earlier than yesterday, today a little warmer than yesterday, in two months, in a month, the cold will call a truce and we will have one enemy less.”

With the aid of interactive hand-drawn animations and the latest mul-timedia technology Mezvinsky and lichterloh create a space reflecting the immediate basic conditions for human existence. Visitors become part of the installation: they are allocated a role by the artist and can discover for themselves the metaphor behind Levi’s “good day.” The animated “rite of spring” scenery created by the artist is intended to symbolize liberation and a new will to live.