Zeitverschluss | Frozen Time: Das Museum als Panikraum | Museums as Panic Rooms

In the 21st century, historical buildings, works of art and collections are far from being tiresome remains of the past, like they were in the modernisation boosts of the 19th century or even still in the 1950s and 1960s. Today, they are meticulously guarded and elaborately upkept treasures: irreplaceable materialisations of collective self-images, national heritage and at the same time, valuable resources of touristic commercialisation. Hence, they have to be preserved at any cost and – when damaged in an accident – have to be restored at all costs.

This notion correlates with the 21st century’s self-description as innovative and future-oriented in a way that needs explanation. Frozen Times explores these paradoxes with a series of on-site visits in institutions that allow us to survey the past, from Vienna to Weimar and Zurich. Historical memorial sites and museums can obviously take many forms, from a temple to a supermarket, from a relic shrine to a bunker. They are shelters, time capsules and sanatoria, clinics for the treatment of phantom pain. What are they promising to protect their visitors from?