Austria just has one nuclear power plant. Zwentendorf. Never activated, thanks to the protesters of 1977 and the Austrian public who voted against nuclear power on November 5th of 1978. Up until today Austria is one of the few countries in Europe not producing nuclear energy. For our writer Zwentendorf was a very special place to visit and take pictures of, as Shutdown festival 2017 would take place exactly 40 years after the protests of 1977. “In her twenties, so being as old as I am right now, my mother marched against this power plant and against nuclear energy in our home country. What the people achieved back then was revolutionary.”, Sara tells. “My physics teacher almost worked as a nuclear technician in the plant. Strangely enough my mother later became a teacher as well. Now, precisely 40 years later, I stood on the grounds that my mother protested on and celebrated. Taking these pictures had a strange feeling to it.” She dug out her mother’s old photos and tried to recreate the composition and theme of the pictures. “Partying at Zwentendorf meant a lot to me. It felt like I came to place that carried a bit of family history as well as a bit of history from home.” Aside from recreating the pictures that her mother took, Sara also took a few more pictures on analogue film, to capture the mood at the power plant. Not your classic party pictures at all!
Pictures by Sara Ghafouri / Prof. Ostr. Mag. B. Ghafouri-Schmidt