Steirischer Herbst – A Festival in Search of Strategies of Avoiding Misfortune
22. August 2008, 19:37:55 unter: Audio, Austria, English, Festivals, Graz, Interviews, Podcasts, Steirischer HerbstMisfortune comes in various forms, as well as the possibilities for avoiding misfortune: saving money or watching TV, loving or eating up, or perhaps just sleeping together. Cultivating moderation, recognizing can also help, sometimes deceiving, patching things up in emergencies in order to hold things together, making it big, or indeed, saving the world after all? In its 41st year, Steirischer Herbst, the contemporary art festival in Graz, is in search of strategies of avoiding misfortune.
About programing the festival Steirischer Herbst
| send feedback 
The leitmotif of the festival
| send feedback The art of avoiding misfortune in Steirischer Herbst 2008
| send feedback On election posters, smiling faces and simplistic strategies of avoiding misfortune can end up belittling the most complex of issues. Every advertisement promises a magic cure for avoiding misfortune: whiter teeth, low-fat sausages, power brakes. But there is something in the wind which still beckons us to approach things critically, a skeptical belief prevails that we are still able to do something.
So what about this belief? Is it justifiable and how so? The productions of Steirischer Herbst place examples of avoiding misfortune in both small as well as big spotlights. They thereby illuminate questions and nuances regarding such strategies, investigate them, often along with the participation of the public as well as scientific research, and, as always, of local and international artists and institutions for art. In our three-part report, we preview a repertorical look at the festival. In terms of strategies for avoiding misfortune, the strategy for a festival and the strategy for life can be quite similar, according to Florian Malzacher, head program director for Steirischer Herbst.
Over a hundred events are offered during the three-week-long program of Steirischer Herbst, which kicks off on October 2nd. The search is distributed throughout about thirty locations and the strategies of avoiding misfortune, we hope, will be appreciated throughout the entire city and beyond. (wh/jn)
