Transplantation of a Hilton hotel room

February/March 2007
Vienna/Linz

As a follow-up project and preparation for “All in the same boat”, a hotel room **** from the Hilton Hotel in Vienna was installed in a condemned house in Linz/Austria for the Chechen family Emiyev in 2007. The project is entitled “Hilton-Home-Guest- Room".

The entire inventory of the hotel room, furniture, carpets, lamps, curtains and paintings were brought from Vienna to Linz and rebuilt in the apartment of the family one to one. It works like an implanted organ in the new home of the family and is temporarily being used as guest room for visitors. The Hilton hotel room became a catalyst for social contacts in the ongoing process of the project. It was temporarily also used as meeting place for auditions in connection with the project “All in the same boat” to search for the migrant’s cultural treasures and to get to know artists from various cultures and their background. Numerous cultural interested guests created a social network around the Emiyevs: For over half a year a wide range of people met in the “Hilton-Home-Guest- Room" every Wednesday afternoon.

To some extent they came to visit the exhibition – the Hilton hotel room in a condemned house – or they were simply just interested in contact and exchange with the Chechen family. There were Chechen fellow countrymen, Austrian artist and politicians. The group grew and also the publicity for the migrant family and their key role in the project “All in the same boat”. The “Hilton-Home-Guest- Room" served as continuation of the social sewing machine effect of the Hope-Field and preparation for the project “All in the same boat”: Many of the visitors participated in this large scale installation in Neufelden.

Further pictures