For the annual Angewandte Festival, students of art education collectively developed a carrier bag for visitors to take — at once an object, an experiment, and a medium for exchange. The project drew inspiration from Ursula K. Le Guin’s essay “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction”, the task of designing the exhibition itself, and the Japanese Furoshiki technique: a single piece of cloth that, through folding, wrapping, and knotting, gives rise to ever new ways of carrying.

The students explored the tension between functionality and non-functionality: one knot holds, two knots carry, and sometimes an empty space emerges, one that holds not only things but also encounters and stories. The fabrics were sourced from the Hilfswerk Wien.

Developed by students of the seminars The Carrier-Bag Theory of Exhibition Making (Ebba Fransén Waldhör) and Vermittlung vermitteln (Béla Meiers) and Raum für Nachhaltigkeit (Michaela Martinek).