Programme
Marusa Sagadin and Michael Hieslmair
Austria
THE RATE OF RETURN
installation in public space
5 - 15 May 2008
People's Open University, Vukovarska 68 
In Zagreb there is a whole array of projects that were built recently or are being built. Among these are office spaces, shopping centres and various multi-purpuse objects. Austrian firms are largely trying to fashion themselves into agents for these investments, which promise large growth and income rates. In this, the participants of such undertakings even swear by historic links - they put special mention on the common economic area of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy.
The basis for starting a construction project is primarily, as possible, an expected high return of capital, which should, once it reaches the point of coverage, start to trickle back to the investors. Through which mechanisms and by way of which personal contacts and international networks in Zagreb do such 
construction projects come to be? Parallel to the flow of investment capital, those involved in the projects travel between Zagreb and Vienna, organise, plan, negotiate, seal contracts and invent new daughter-companies.
Based on research, the installation presents the real and fictive course of planning, developing and realisation of an enterprise of constructing in Zagreb a business centre that is linked to Vienna. In the form of mapping social space through chosen agents, that is, the network of their interrelationships, a chronological story develops and comments in the form of scene images and text, ranging from the initial idea, through the planning and construction phase, all the way to the moment in which the object is wholly rented out or sold.
Michael Hieslmair, architect and artist, lives and works in Vienna. He is author of works of theory, curatorial concepts and exhibition objects that deal with methods of spatial planning, urban/rural cultures, mobility, and micro- and macro-political spatial order.
Marusa Sagadin, artist and architect, lives and works in Vienna and Graz. Her projects and concepts deal with alternative models of living and organisational models of cities.
Marusa Sagadin and Michael Hiesmair have been working together since 2004, and have up til now taken part in several international expositions: Bûhne Land, Forum Stadtpark, Graz, 2006; Shrinking Cities II, Galerie für zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig, 2005; Transit Migration. Europa ist keine Festung, Kölnischer Kunstverein, Köln, 2005; Förderungspreis des Landes Steiermark für zeitgenössische bildende Kunst, Neue Gallerie am Landesmuseum Joaneum, Graz, 2004; Festival der Regionen, Ober Oestereich, 2007.
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