Handshake - Willi Dorner Official Website

HANDSHAKE – tracing the origins of a gesture

A project commissioned by Kunst im öffentlichen Raum Niederösterreich (Art in Public Spaces Lower Austria)

Eighty years ago, on the night of 8 to 9 May 1945, a photograph with great symbolic significance was taken in the peaceful community of Erlauf. Representatives of the two world powers, Russia and America, shook hands to seal the end of the Second World War.
To mark this anniversary year, Lisa Rastl and Willi Dorner developed a multi-part, cross-generational performative concept based on that historic snapshot. Handshake – tracing a gesture focuses on the act of reaching out to one another. How can reconciliation be achieved? What does it mean to make peace, not only on the world stage, but also between ourselves?

The project kicked off with a workshop on the topic of “reaching out” with young people. Together, they discussed “approaching one another”, the courage required to do so, and its multifaceted meaning. The resulting video clips were published on social media (@gesturesofpeace). The adult population was also invited on this day to recreate the historical image in the same place as 80 years ago and to talk about it. This re-enactment was documented on film, so that the focus was on getting into the gesture.
As the second part of their project, Lisa Rastl and Willi Dorner invited people to literally sit down together on the occasion of the „Peace Festival“. Together with all the guests, they added a symbolic image of diverse coexistence to the historic image of the world powers reaching out to each other.
Together, they created a large, colourful circle of chairs that everyone had brought with them, giving all participants equal visibility and thus expressing respect and togetherness. The crossroads at the market square were closed for this purpose.
The video was shown in a shop window in the municipality of Erlauf in the summer of 2025 and is now part of the permanent exhibition at the Erlauf Erinnert Museum.

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