The Box of Truth is a glass container in the courtyard of Vienna’s MuseumsQuartier. It contains two chairs and a lie detector. Every Vienna Trial weekend will start with two public figures being attached to the lie detector and subjected to a public hearing by actor Bibiana Beglau. The thirty-minute sessions will examine particular moral and political constellations that lie behind the scandals of the Vienna Trials. Setting out from life stories, experiences and decisions taken by the prominent participants, the Box of Truth will become a place of political contradictions and ethical dilemmas.

In spring 2020, an increased spread of Covid-19 cases occurred in Ischgl in Tyrol, followed by infections throughout the country and the first lockdown starting on 16 March. For around three years, various anti-pandemic measures of varying severity were imposed, from a ‘lockdown for the unvaccinated’, the 2-G rules and mask requirements to a mandatory vaccination programme that was passed by the parliament but never implemented. The pandemic has added wounds to society and left scars: from rifts between ‘supporters of the measures’ and ‘opponents of the measures’ to political and economic consequences that still exist today, making some the winners and others the losers of the pandemic. Was society, even if it likes to call up crisis scenarios, not at all prepared for the actual crisis? Did too many people behave in a lack of solidarity or was too much prohibited?

Veronica Kaup-Hasler

Veronica Kaup-Hasler, born in 1968 in Dresden, has been Vienna’s City Councillor for Culture since 2018. She was artistic director of festivals like Theaterformen or steirischer herbst. During the Covid-19 pandemic, she called for increased interim aid and funding for Viennese art, culture and science. Later, she said: ‘We should ask the really big winners of this coronavirus crisis, which do exist, and the tax evaders who are causing us to lose around one trillion euros a year, to pay up’.

Heini Staudinger

Heini Staudinger, born in 1953 in Vöcklabruck, is entrepreneur. He started with a small shoe business in Vienna. Meanwhile, his company GEA/Waldviertler comprises over 50 branches in Austria, Germany and Switzerland. In 2022, he was a candidate for the Federal Presidency of Austria. He emphasised a critical stance towards capitalism, corporations, resource consumption and wealth distribution as his core topics and received 1.5 % of the votes. During the Covid-19 pandemic he refused the vaccination and aroused attention with statements such as: ‘I'm not putting on the mask because I'm not going along with such absurdity. Legislation would be well advised to count on people's common sense, otherwise it will lose them.