Vienna Bank Protest Dance - Hypotopia
1,982 views · Published 18 December 2014 · 9:46 · Indexed 12 November 2026
Channel: denniscallan · 2014 · Travel & Events
travel videos & photos at: https://townsofeurope.com/ with text, maps & links. What could you do with 19 billion euro? Give it away to a corrupt and failing bank or build a new city? Stay tuned for a dramatic and cultural protest, featuring a dance duo from Vienna and Easter Island and a small-scale model city for 100,000 people built by the protesters. While strolling through Vienna one evening I wanted to get a twilight view of one of the city's greatest architectural landmarks, the Karlskirche. And it's particularly beautiful at twilight. I got there just at the right time, but then I was surprised and at first a little disappointed, by all sorts of activities happening in front of the church which I thought were going to be interfering with my enjoyment of the sublime experience – and then I realize that something really wonderful and fantastic was going on. This was a political protest done with great artistic creativity: architecture students, musicians, lecturers, philosophers, intellectuals and dancers coming together to protest a major banking scandal that took place in Austria. The Austrian taxpayers bailed out a major bank, Hypo Alpe Adria, in 2009 back in the heat of the financial crisis, by nationalizing it at the cost to taxpayers of €19 billion – that equals about $25 billion. This €19 billion is such a large amount of money that it's very hard for people to visualize how much it really represents, and therefore this group of students from the Technical University of Vienna got together and decided to build a model city that could hold 100,000 inhabitants, and which could be constructed at a cost of €19 billion – a much better use of money, they feel, than bailing out a failed bank.
