IMPROPER WALLS 6TH BIRTHDAY
Improper Walls just celebrated our 6th birthday. Therefore we asked our whole team: Ale, Elisabeth, Elizabeth, Kata and Barbora, Urtė and Justina (read our "script" in the previous post), to contribute to this edition. Our question is how Improper Walls (being placed in this environment) shaped and shapes who we are. The answers made us cry and our hearts melt. We love you!
Elizabeth Spouse
Development Coordinator
“You are allowed to not be loud!”
We were being loud. We’re always too excited to “not be loud”. But we’re an organized bunch and it’s all part of it - when closing hours come, we have to move the party elsewhere. We bring fascinating new people into our holy space and go crazy, then the clock above Reindorfgasse slowly clicks into place and it’s time to go, but we’re not assholes. Like my polite Canadian relatives used to ask, “Would you like to do the dishes?” I heard Urte declare to the buzzing beautiful kiddies of the night, “We’re closing! You are allowed to not be loud!”
‘Shut the f**k up’ and ‘you have to leave’ would have sufficed, but no, this is a place of tender words and tender hearts. Badass, but tender. I am forever changed by simple details such as these. And after all of the years I’ve been able to be a part of this, when the evening crowd is loud and we guide them to the next place, I feel excited for everyone who gets to experience it for the first time - and might become a regular like I did.”
Elisabeth Hinkel
Curator
“Little did I know when I first set foot in Improper Walls. It was before the first show, before the rooms were fully renovated. It was a drunk past-midnight stunt to visit the Improper Construction Site with one of the founders. I didn’t know anyone else on the team and just heard about this idea of having a non-commercial gallery space for the first time. Younger me only knew the art scene as this White Cube abstraction and younger me had a lot of doubts. These people really invested all their money, time and energy into something that most likely won’t pay off? It shocked my small town mind. But I started to help - why not? Let’s see what will happen. When I look back now, I finally understand.
I was always the outsider-kid. I struggled with depression and anxiety on and off for most of my conscious life, most of it directed towards social life. I guess I wouldn’t have understood what Improper Walls actually meant to the founders even if they would have explained it to me with an 88 page long PowerPoint presentation. ”
“Last year I heard an interview with Johann Hari, the author of Lost Connections. Hari said something that is so basic, yet so overlooked: In all of human’s time on earth we always lived in groups, communities, tribes. Humans depend on each other and can’t live alone. Being alone meant death. Being in a group meant food, help, healthcare, protection. So being alone naturally comes with depression and anxieties. It is how our brain is wired. It’s a survival instinct. It’s the weird way our brain wants to show us that being alone is not right. Today we can survive alone - we can go grocery shopping, earn money and have fun alone. But many people are lonely. So our depression and anxiety goes into absurd directions. I had many panic attacks because I didn’t finish a text in time or forgot to write an email. But I was not excluded or hated. I was welcomed warmly, with all my issues and faults. Today, we don’t need tribes to physically survive, we need tribes to mentally survive, and not just to mentally survive, to actually live in safety with an open heart and a fulfilled soul. I am happy to have drunkenly wobbled into the Improper Walls tribe. It also made me realize how many tribes I missed joining. To you reading this: take every opportunity to let others be themselves. We are billions of humans and all have the same improper brains.”
Barbora Horská
Intern
Assistant Curator
“Vienna. A bubble. Multicultural art scene, a bubble within a bubble.
And in this bubble, there is another one. Improper Walls. Place, where idealism is put into action. Safe space to be yourself. Out loud. Make mistakes, be late. Learn. To disagree and still be listened to. Considered. Inspired. Empowered. All while having fun.
Three months. Most of the days spent isolated, meeting online, not being able to get to know each other properly..yet since the first moment, these women have made me feel not only welcomed and appreciated, but valued as an equal part of the team, redefining the usual dynamics between intern and the rest. The ones who already know and the one that needs to experience. How often are those with less knowledge and skills, or just different opinions treated as inferior? Patronized, at best? You won’t find that in here. Instead, considering what lies outside these bubbles, portal to the upside down.
So even when it’s true that you should never meet your heroes, you should definitely meet the Impropers. They just might become your new ones.”
Kata Anna Tüz
Curator and Online Shop Manager
“I remember the first time I set foot into the gallery space of Improper Walls: I didn‘t know much about the Viennese art scene, I just started painting, I just heard about Improper Walls for the first time. I was nervous. But the very moment I stepped in, I only felt warm and welcome. I felt like I finally found a place I belong to.
Improper Walls is like Neil Youngs‘ „I believe in you“. It’s like a long nice hug you need when feeling down, like a stranger smiling at you and warming your heart after having a bad day, like someone telling you „hey, it‘s okay to make mistakes“ while gently touching your shoulder. And it is okay to make mistakes! It is okay to spill some of the paint on the floor. Or drill one too many holes into the wall. In the end, everything will be fixed and everything turns out amazing. The love, spirit and support of everyone involved is just enough to make amazing things happen. And that‘s what you learn working with these lovely beings of the improper cosmos: you can do and achieve anything you want.”
Ale Zapata
Curator and External Projects Coordinator
“I’m easily overwhelmed trying to put in a few words what Improper Walls means to me and how it has shaped me. I could tell you how I ended up here, funny insight stories or the struggles we’ve been through...
These 6 past years have been a self discovery journey, the most fascinating and challenging one.
Improper Walls is however the anchor and my boat at the same time, a safe space to experiment, learn, one of the only constants in my life and a medium where I invest my passions, hopes, energy and many times also stinky sweat.
It was love at first sight, universal synchronicity, you know when you can’t just explain how perfect everything works, a remarkable concurrence of events and circumstances.
But did I tell you already it’s all about love? Love towards an idea, the magical individuals involved, love from a chosen family, love to art, love of creating, of connecting and that my dears... that’s the secret spice; we just FUCKING LOVE and we love what we do.”