University of Applied Arts Vienna living sauna : an essay on saunas, extra-ordinary sauna experiences, and their socio-political potential and impact. Alchemists made gold out of dirt – we make social revolutions out of sweat! Sauna is so much and at the same time so reduced: you and your body, heat, and maybe some other people. It is a place where we may encounter absolute strangers in a very intimate setting. Therefore, almost every sauna experience is by default dealing with the challenging question of providing a ‘safer space’ while at the same time being welcoming and inclusive to a variety of different people. A dialectical situation of a closed and open space, of intimacy and otherness, of creating comfort and leaving the comfort zone. Under the pressure of commodification and the driving motive for profits, the pace of the public space increasingly accelerated with fewer and fewer options to take pause. Here, our extraordinary – context-responsive, socially active, and politically potent – sauna comes into action. We play with sauna experiences as a tool for grounding moments and as a platform for inspiring and meaningful social encounters. In our sauna, people are invited to relax, think, connect, and create together. And to activate the joining sauna enthusiasts even further, we want to break with the usual relation of guests buying a service. Therefore, we invite everyone to play an active role, be it by setting up the sauna, performing an ‘Aufguss,’ or contributing a poem, a topic to discuss, or anything else. And to create more of these extra-ordinary sauna experiences, we want to inspire people around the globe to come up with new ways of doing sauna; to help people to develop new forms of social rituals, free of religious or cultural legacies. Therefore, we found the Sauna International, a body for exchange, collecting knowledge, and sharing inspiring examples of how to come up with your own sauna session through three major approaches: join, borrow, and build. More on: https://livingsauna.cargo.site/ (This thesis is mainly done by Franz Hagmann. But it is only one part of the bigger project 'living sauna,' which is a group work I did with my fellow students Karlotta Leonie Paul and Ilia Gromov.) en TEXT Master thesis Masterarbeit Tesi di master Written component of artistic Thesis Schriftlicher Teil der künstlerischen Abschlussarbeit Parte scritta della tesi artistica Text Masterarbeit Schriftlicher Teil der künstlerischen Abschlussarbeit Testo Tesi di master Parte scritta della tesi artistica Text Master thesis Written component of artistic Thesis Sauna Public Space Participatory Guideline Introduction Social Design Art in Public Space Reclaim International Franz Hagmann Predrag Milic