Where does a rupture begin – in a word, in a sentence, in silence, in a gesture? How fractured may a language be and still remain a space in which writing can take place?
With the programme Sprachbrüche, the Museum der Migration Wien (MUSMIG) launched an initial exploration of these and related questions in late October and early November 2025. In the coming year, this thematic focus will be continued and expanded in greater depth.
Sprachbrüche refers to experiences lived along the fault lines of a multilingual reality. In autumn 2025, MUSMIG turned its attention intensively, for the first time, to these linguistic in-between spaces. Sprachbrüche – perhaps imagined with an open bracket: Sprach(_)Brüche – marks those moments when people, and the languages that surround them, are affected by something shifting or breaking: when the language of one’s (grand)parents begins to slip away; when a word from a childhood vocabulary is lost; or when an official lingua franca offers no expression for a feeling that can be named with precision in another tongue.
Sprachbrüche signifies both departures and disruptions: when the language in which one is attacked or marginalised is refused, and new linguistic paths are forged that allow new friendships to emerge. It also points to breakthroughs – moments in which a sentence, a single word, a line of verse transcends its own boundaries and resonates deeply.
The stories that arise from such ruptures are endless, plural and polyphonic. At the heart of Sprachbrüche lies an ethos: where something fractures and fragments, where nothing has ever been a single, seamless whole, language can act as both bridge and ladder. Rupture, separation and plurality invite us to engage creatively with the languages that surround us – even when only fragments of one language or another are available to us.