- guardian.co.uk, Friday June 16 2000 02.04 BST
Last Sunday, Christoph Schlingensief, the resident director of the Volksbühne in Berlin, locked 10 "foreigners" into a portable office in a square in central Vienna and invited Austrians to decide which of them should be "deported".
One foreigner was to be removed from the site each day and arrangements were made for votes to be cast by telephone or through the internet. A sign with the words "Foreigners Out" was put on one of the four offices.
The event - entitled "Please Love Austria" - mimicked Dutch and German docu-soaps in which viewers were asked to decide which of several young people should continue to share a sealed-off house.
Mr Schlingensief, who hired actors to play the parts of asylum seekers, said it was a way of "bringing into the open the dirty images that Austria does not want seen in Europe". What it has unquestionably done is provoke a response.
After an inflammable liquid was sprayed on one of the units and set alight, Wole Osifo, who plays the part of a car mechanic from Nigeria, said it had prompted fears among the actors.
"It began as a project which aimed to show that everyone has the same right of abode," he said. "Now it has become dangerous."
There have been furious reactions from Austrians outside the portable offices in which the foreigners are housed. "Where is the swine who authorised this?", one man asked. "They showed these containers on television in Paris. In France, people are pointing to us and thinking this is a country of Nazis."
The Freedom party has threatened to sue over Mr Schlingensief's use of its symbols and announced that it will seek a vote of no confidence in the Vienna city councillor who approved the event.
The Freedom party has been immersed in controversy since joining a coalition government earlier this year.
