The installation presents the thirty articles put forward in the 1948 UN Declaration of Human Rights. It creates a public space of interaction, of reflection and learning, contemplation and rest: a banquet that playfully conveys the idea of human rights on different levels of representation. It links Vienna to its sister Human Rights Cities. The depiction of human rights as meals on hand-painted plates illustrates that human rights are in fact mental food. Just as food has to be digested and integrated into our bodies, human rights have to be digested and integrated into our minds. Quotes on human rights by philosophers and writers from antiquity to the present are embedded in a stylized map of the Danube. The river thus becomes a metaphor of the permanent flow of ideas, goods and people, retracing the long and diverse history of human rights thinking. A red question mark leads to and around the banquet. It challenges everybody to become aware of their own rights and to defend human rights. Vienna Banquet reminds us that we are their guardians, must never lose sight of their meaning, and have to fight for them.

The project is realized by KÖR (Public Art Vienna) in collaboration with the Neubau District Administration Office.