Art in Public Space Styria
Widerstand aufstellen? / Ustanovitev odpora? (Putting Up Resistance?)

For decades, the bronze figure of a torchbearer stood in the basement of a Slovenian cultural association in Radsberg/Radiše, Carinthia. The Croatian artist Marijan Matijević (1907–1971) had created it in the late 1940s, along with two other monuments commemorating the partisan resistance in Carinthia. This largest resistance movement in the German Reich was suppressed in Austria after 1945, and the statue was never erected.

After nearly eighty years in the basement, it is time to present this statue to the public and discuss questions such as: What does the sculpture’s story tell us about the history of the resistance? What does it mean to remember the resistance and to erect the partisan today? How do societies find contemporary ways to commemorate?