"Service/Aufschlag" reinterprets the sport of tennis by comparing the movement of tennis players hitting a ball with the movement of protestors throwing a Molotov cocktail. While acknowledging the aristocratic origins of tennis, this comparison of movements aims to distance the racket sport from its upper-class context, by juxtaposing it with social extremism, to suggest that perhaps timing and position have become outmoded, displaced by labour that produces energy and energy which in turn produces a reaction. Or alternately, that the cost of bourgeois welfare is inversely proportional to the nonconformity of an exploited class.The object of the game is to play the ball in such a way that the opponent is not able to play a valid return or until the ball breaks and releases the cocoa. Three nets are stretched across the court, dividing it into three equal ends. The publication is a selection of pictures of players hitting a service and people throwing Molotov cocktails. Installation view: das weisse haus, Vienna in the exhibition Agains the Playbook curated by Aline Lenzhofer. A Performative Activation with Bita Bell, Alexandru Cosarca, and Gerald Straub was presented on March 28, 2026. Workshops were conducted by the artists Manuela Picallo Gil and Oscar Cueto in the secondary school Leibnizgasse, BrgOrg15 Henriettenplatz and the Geblergasse grammar school in Hernals, Vienna. Masks, Clothes, and Billboards of Protests were made by the pupils of these schools. Photo: Lea-Maraike Sambale, Manuela Picallo Gil, Ibrahim Dirani.
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