September 21–October 15, 2023
Will the war in Ukraine last forever? Could another virus lock us down? Might AI replace humanity, or will climate change get to us first? There are no universal solutions to today’s polycrisis. Calls for peace might support inaction, pleas to end oppressive language create but further euphemisms. Survival may be impossible without entering a twilight zone where the most demonic qualities of humanity come to the fore.
Such moral quandaries are familiar from the 20th century and its political violence. Yet evil also adopts new, seductive forms; its classic persona may be less harmful than obedience stemming from the desire for a demon-free world. This makes it all the more important to “draw the line that separates the weak from the wicked” (Primo Levi) in the gray zones people negotiate. In a reality stranger than fiction, literary means might be best suited for that.
Humans and Demons, the 56th edition of steirischer herbst festival, turns to character-based storytelling to show how people deal with the demons surrounding them. Neither heroes nor villains, its protagonists resemble the charismatic rogues of the picaresque novel—an early modern form that fits a city flaunting a premodern topography. Taking place from September 21 to October 15 in Graz and Styria, Austria, the festival’s newly commissioned works offer points from which to reassess the city and the world it contains—listening to its minor, eerie, sometimes strangely optimistic tales.
steirischer herbst ’23 opens with an operatic piece by Lulu Obermayer confronting a crypto-fascist monument on the city’s central hill, Schloßberg. Further opening performances by Adrienn Hód /HODWORKS and Michael Portnoy look at the pressures and seductions of obedience and social engineering. Giacomo Veronesi scrutinizes geopolitical gray zones, Mateja Bučar examines the erasure of Jewish Graz. Later in the festival, Theater im Bahnhof explores deliberative democracy, and Madame Nielsen channels the towering, ambivalent figure of David Bowie. Together, Kunsthaus Graz and steirischer herbst have commissioned a new performance by Jasmina Cibic for eight voices and semaphore alphabet.
Four group exhibitions in different locations revolve around historical protagonists connected, however loosely, to Graz’s history.
One is a derelict call center in an otherwise posh uphill neighborhood. Its standardized architecture and prominent radio tower serve as the premises of Demon Radio, visited by Dr. Jazz, otherwise known as Dietrich Schulz-Köhn. A Nazi activist and Luftwaffe officer, Schulz-Köhn was an avid fan of the genre prohibited by his own party. He later became West Germany’s premier jazz DJ and donated his estate to Graz’s Institute for Jazz Research. Departing from his story, the works assembled here explore mixed messages and their transmission, as well as the theme of possession.
The cultural institution Forum Stadtpark slightly resembles a modernist villa. For steirischer herbst ’23, it becomes the Villa Perpetuum Mobile, the residency of Stefan Marinov, a dissident’s dissident. Unsatisfied with opposing the Communist government of his native Bulgaria, the physicist also believed he could invent a perpetuum mobile in his exile in Graz. When his experiments failed, he committed suicide. The contributions here are objects of a fanciful interior where Marinov could have lived, revealing different sides of his search for free energy.
Down by the Mur River, the Minoriten Monastery has united religion and modern art since the 1960s. One of the artists featured early on was Mira Schendel. Born in Switzerland into a Catholic family of Jewish origins, she spent World War II in Italy and Yugoslavia, receiving a Croatian passport in Graz in 1944. In 1949, Schendel left for Brazil, where she would become famous for her Neo-Concrete graphics and sculpture. Inspired by this story, the monastery turns into a Church of Ruined Modernity for the festival—representing the continent Schendel left behind, reflecting and diffracting modernity’s violence.
Historically, the district of Gries, prone to flooding, was where the lower classes and migrants lived and to some extent still do. steirischer herbst imagines it submerged under waters of the past, at its heart the time capsule of Submarine Frieda, a former supermarket hiding a former dance hall. From here, one can observe the humdrum and buzz of the neighborhood. But who is Frieda? An accidental, fictitious heroine, created when interwar pacifists changed the word “Friede” (peace) in a 1925 demonstration photo out of fear of the Nazis. This is reminiscent of how crypto-protest and absurdism function as survival strategies in today’s dictatorships. Frieda stands for all the anonymous heroes and heroines of the past who swam through the maelstrom of oppression.
The exhibitions and performances of Humans and Demons are accompanied by artist talks, panel discussions, symposia, as well as six specially commissioned cabaret shows.
Participating artists include Pavel Brăila, Mateja Bučar, Andrea Büttner, Zuleikha Chaudhari, Jasmina Cibic, Alice Creischer, Lucile Desamory, Anna Engelhardt and Mark Cinkevich, Vadim Fishkin, Andreas Fogarasi, Hollis Frampton, Cyprien Gaillard, Dani Gal, Pedro Gómez-Egaña, Jos de Gruyter & Harald Thys, Georg Haberler, Adrienn Hód / HODWORKS, Anton Kats, Dana Kavelina, Maria Loboda, Madame Nielsen, Eteri Nozadze, Lulu Obermayer, Michael Portnoy, Shimabuku, Michael Stevenson, Meg Stuart, Markus Sworcik and René Stiegler, Theater im Bahnhof, and Giacomo Veronesi.
herbst cabaret with Julie Béna, Selin Davasse, Barbara Juch, Jessika and Jimmy Khazrik, Mikołaj Sobczak, Stefanie Sourial
As ever, steirischer herbst embraces a varied Partner Program by local art institutions and cultural initiatives as well as its festivals-within-the-festival ORF musikprotokoll and Out of Joint.
The full artist list and program will be published online on August 15, 2023.
Online accreditation for press and professionals also opens in August. For prior registration and further information, please contact press@steirischerherbst.at.
steirischer herbst ’23 is curated by Ekaterina Degot, David Riff, Pieternel Vermoortel, Gábor Thury, and Barbara Seyerl, and created by the festival’s whole team. herbst cabaret is curated by Mirela Baciak.
