Franz West passed away in 2012 as one of Austria’s internationally most successful artists. His practice consistently foregrounded participation and collaboration in both artistic production and reception, seeking to create works open in form and meaning and embedded within a broader social continuum. His Passstücke and furniture pieces called for users and social interaction; he staged and photographed them in performative settings with friends and colleagues. West collaborated with prominent artists to produce joint installations, while also granting scope for creative input to those who materially realized his sculptures and concepts. He actively supported and collected works of younger artists. His work was shaped by a sustained dialogue with a wide circle of intellectuals.

Investigating the cooperative and participatory nature of Franz West's artistic practice depends on verbal communication and narrative, and must take place while the members of West's social milieu are still largely alive.

The oral history project aims to conduct interviews with 55 individuals who were closely connected to Franz West—professionally, intellectually, or personally—over shorter or longer periods of their lives. The conversations will address artistic conception, modes of collaboration and production, as well as exhibition practices, collecting contexts, and reception. They will evoke dialogues and encounters, social groupings, milieus and networks, as well as artistic spaces of action.

For 2026/27, the Wien Museum is preparing the exhibition Franz West & Vienna (working title) as a documentary complement to the simultaneous large-scale retrospective at Albertina Modern in the neighboring Künstlerhaus. The integration of the oral history videos into the exhibition is being developed by Georg Traska in collaboration with the Wien Museum curator Vincent Elias Weisl. Edited into short thematic modules, these videos will accompany the biographical and thematic chapters of the exhibition. The scholarly findings of the oral history research will be presented in an essay in the exhibition catalogue.