Reality Bites

In 2000 approval of extreme right wing Austrian government the Freedom Party gave rise to an original and explosive form of protest, otherwise deemed “living artwork” with the resulting documentary recently airing on SBS.

German director / performance artist extraordinaire Christoph Schlingensief s invention of an interactive concentration camp in the middle of Vienna’s tourist center provoked political hysteria.

The concept involved a shipping container filled with actual refugees under the banner title“Auslander Raus! (”Foreigners out!”), this “Reality TV” show streamed live on the internet and in the true spirit of Big Brother, viewers had the chance to watch and vote for which refugee they liked with refugee with the least votes getting evicted, or in this case, deported.

The interactive satire on xenophobia and Big Brother madness is a swing that hits a little too close to home for our own government’s liking, with it being no exception to anti-immigrant rhetoric; in Australia there has always been an undercurrent of anti-immigrant concept flavoring foreign policy.

Whether this exhibition is social therapy or political theatrics, it raised bile in the throats of Austria’s Freedom Party and its leader Joerg Haider- maybe not so much for amplifying their questionable foreign policy but more at the frustration that Schlingensief thought of the lucrative idea before they did.

Schlingensief’s construction of one of the biggest public acts of tongue-in-cheek art challenging politics sparked protests of Knife attacks, Punch-ups and Political intrigue which can hardly be classified as a case of neonationalism but more correctly xenophobia.

Though it did provoke national political hysteria this satirical combination of politics and peoples’ obsession with Reality TV (we had Pauline Hanson do the tango on national TV, does that count??) does make us question what the world is coming to. But maybe we’ve stumbled upon the beginnings of what could be a successful future foreign policy- after all, participants in Big Brother do, out of their own free will, volunteer to be confined behind high security walls. A replacement program of deporting BB evictees in exchange for detainees and genuine refugees who may positively contribute to society is really not such a bad idea and we will probably all be better off for it.

If all else fails the only thing that may reassure us that there will not be a BB27 is that Gretel Killeen’s peroxide molested hair probably won’t last that long.

Counselor: I’d like to put video cameras in every room of your house so that I can observe your uncensored behavior.

Peter: Wow, just like that show Big Brother… except somebody’ll be watching
“Family Guy”.