Public space is both a battlefield and stage for those visions and ideas in which a society puts its faith. At a distance, it also discloses that which is blindly supported in this society. One can survey it as if it were a kind of societal relief, or a contemporary witness of history, as it reveals both conscious and unconscious orders and structures.

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In those times when the common faith in ideas is particularly strong, signs of this faith are placed into public space in the form of monuments which make beliefs concrete to us, alert us of the destructive power of faith, and signal the successful displacement of other beliefs. more »

Misfortune 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

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The leitmotif of the festival

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The art of avoiding misfortune in Steirischer Herbst 2008

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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. more »

In Heinrich Kleist’s essay, “On the Marionettentheater”, a discussion takes place between a layman and the principal dancer of the city opera. The layman, impressed by the presentation, wants to know what kind of technical mechanism has made it possible for the puppets to dance so convincingly that it seems as though dance itself has been shown in its most perfect form. The dance professional considers this for a moment, then gives an answer: When we see a “perfect” dance presentation and ask how it was done, then we’re already missing the point. It does not depend on the mechanics, nor on the perfected techniques with which the individual limbs of the puppets are handled with the most precision.

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If one wants to understand why a dance appears “perfect”, it is much more effective not to focus so much on the technical perfection, but rather on the mechanisms of the representation of the dance. If these mechanisms are perfect, then the viewer who sees a movement corresponding to the represented one has to call this movement “dance”. more »

This beautiful song annihilates, at least since the group Fuckhead has been celebrating its progressive deconstruction in a big way. Already captivated in recent years by the adrenaline kick of the mosh pit, the musicians and performers Aigner, Bruckmayr, Strohmann, Kern, Jöchtl, and Pittermann got their start originally as a noise-rock band. Along with their music and audience members, who are integrated onto the stage, Tableaux Vivants-type held-pose ending scenes have allowed Fuckhead to differentiate themselves from the authenticity-oriented hardcore punk generation at end of the eighties. Their ironic handling of political and masculinity-related themes in their “authenticity pictures” is still relevant for them today.

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However, irony must be understood in order to be noticed. This was not always the case. At the beginning of their career, Fuckhead’s role as a projection surface often ended up being a bad call. The left-wingers found Fuckhead to be too right, the right-wing found them to be too gay, the underground felt they lacked political objectives, and for the art world, Fuckhead was too nonconformist to be integrated into either art theory circles or the art business. more »

“Mankind” consists of two female artists. As in every other civilization, this one also has its prehistory. One half of Mankind is D. Kimm, a poet and musician originating from Montréal. Already before joining Mankind, Kimm was organizing literature festivals and was the leader of “Les Filles électriques”, which performed poetry in its written, spoken, and electronic forms. The other half of Mankind, Alexis O`Hara, a musician from Ottawa, was already examining the human condition through sound experimentation, Onomatopoea, and Poetry Slam performances.

Mankind performs live electronic sound samples, mixed with their own voices set to sound loops, poetic conversations, and spontaneously produced noise bytes, creating a kind of “sound cinema” rich with images, sounds and content. In their own words, Mankind describes themselves as a “supersonic cinema with a visual bonus”. The public gets a cinematic experience minus the rewind button. The improvisatorial character of their performances constantly creates something new to view and breaks through the glass fourth wall, which in conventional theatre, normally separates the art from the audience. more »

The job description for Marten Spangberg encompasses many terms. He got his start as a dance critic, writes on theory, is active as a performer, dance dramaturge, a curator, and a choreographer, and is considered a stage producer in quite a positive sense. Spangberg has been collaborating with the Swedish architect, Lindstrand Tor, since 2004 under the name International Festival.

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Their collaborative work explores perceptions of concepts related to body and space, and has gained international attention. At the present and in the last year, they have been invited to the European Arts Center in Cologne, the PERFORMA 07 in New York, and the Steirischen Herbst 07. For the festival in Graz, they developed “The Theater”, a multi-faceted enterprise which simultaneously describes a venue for stories, characters, and illusions, the performances that take place there, and the actual spatially-adaptable theater that was constructed from freight containers. more »