September 22–October 16, 2022
Every autumn, steirischer herbst festival works at the juncture of documentary fact and artistic fiction, and this year, the fact of Russia’s attack on Ukraine looms heavy over everything else. After a prologue in July with films by Ukrainian filmmakers and about Ukraine, the ongoing war prompts the festival to rethink and revisit the other wars inscribed into its history. The Cold War and the memory of World War II overshadowed the festival’s early years, later editions happened with the Yugoslav Wars right next door. Yet, in this cozy corner of Austria, these nearby front lines are out of sight and out of mind, until the repressed returns with a vengeance. The overall theme of A War in the Distance addresses the larger, looming presence of battles mentally kept at bay.
As for the curatorial fantasy, this year it transforms part of steirischer herbst into a classical art museum. The festival is centered around a large exhibition in the rooms of Neue Galerie Graz. Reopening the historical entrance to the museum, steirischer herbst revisits its collection, staging a series of encounters between rarely seen historical artworks and contemporary works, many of them new commissions. The focus is on narrative and figurative painting of the 19th and 20th centuries, often openly political, from both sides of the left-right spectrum, and often from Eastern Europe. Neue Galerie Graz’s interest in this area since the 1960s has been pioneering, though also shaped by crypto-colonial biases toward former Habsburg domains. In a subjective curatorial narrative, the exhibition explores the artistic reflection of an increasingly polarized world shaped by the dismantling of empires, ongoing colonialism, and mounting class struggles, and asks what these mean to the festival’s own deeper politics. The exhibition is a collaboration with Neue Galerie Graz / Universalmuseum Joanneum and runs through 12 February 2023. During the festival, it is accompanied by a rich program of performances.
For the festival’s opening on September 22, Raed Yassin remembers the Lebanese Civil War and revisits a theatrical puppet parade held in Beirut in the 1980s. The opening day also features the premiere of a musical lecture-performance by Ming Wong that traces the Sino-American “ping-pong” diplomacy. A durational performance on the opening weekend by Augustas Serapinas manipulates the context of the museum to address fraught lines of communication in times of crisis.
Further premieres include a new performance by Boris Charmatz inside the city’s tallest church to examine the Greek notion of ekklesia (assembly). Theater im Bahnhof continues its long-standing partnership with steirischer herbst to cast an ironic glance at real estate development on Schloßberg, the hill in the middle of Graz.
As the festival continues, other themes and memories are activated in newly commissioned productions. Giacomo Veronesi focuses on young male bodies mobilized in wartime. Boris Nikitin revisits the form of “coming out” to address his own previously hidden family history. Navaridas & Deutinger develop special artistic guided tours for the exhibition.
Forum Stadtpark hosts an exhibition of lesser-known works by the renowned filmmaker Harun Farocki made against war. It is framed by a discussion program, linking the festival to its prologue, featuring panels with Tom Holert, Oleksiy Kuchansky, and Clio Nicastro; Armina Pilav, Nour Shantout, and Yosh; Michael Marder and Anton Tarasyuk; as well as Oleksiy Radynski and Herwig G. Höller.
Adding a note of humor necessary in difficult times, steirischer herbst revives the tradition of political cabaret in Forum Stadtpark’s recently renovated basement with shows by Verena Dengler, eSeL (Lorenz Seidler), and Les Trucs in October.
Also renewed this year is the festival’s strong presence outside Graz. Bus tours visit Hartberg for Haus lebt, a temporary cultural center in a landmark building, or Eisenerz and other Styrian towns to see the work of architect and anti-fascist Herbert Eichholzer. At Schloss Retzhof, writers trace the fading memory of a refugee camp that at one time housed 21,000 people. Tours beyond Styria visit Maribor, Ruden, and Villach for a project on the traces of modernism in industrial architecture.
The festival’s literary focus is also expanding. Besides Out of Joint, the literary festival within steirischer herbst, the literary magazine manuskripte hosts a special section in their fall issue with war diaries and poetry by Ukrainian authors, curated by poet Galina Rymbu.
Further highlights of the 55th festival edition include a solo exhibition by Hito Steyerl at Kunsthaus Graz, a series of exhibitions about graphic design between art and advertising, and a lively program by the association APORON 21 in a former furniture store. The very first laureate of the Werner Fenz Scholarship by the City of Graz for Art in Public Space, Hannes Zebedin, opens his sculptural intervention in Rösselmühlpark. All this is steirischer herbst, too, just like musikprotokoll and the herbstbar at Graz’s popular venue Feinkost Mild.
steirischer herbst ’22 artists
Gabriel Abrantes, Friederike Anders, Boris Charmatz [terrain], Keti Chukhrov, Josef Dabernig, Harun Farocki, Jannik Franzen, Aslan Goisum, Assaf Gruber, Emil Gruber, Flaka Haliti, Heinali (Oleh Shpudeiko), Yuriy Illienko, Iman Issa, Zhanna Kadyrova, Rajkamal Kahlon, Iosif Király, KwieKulik, Kateryna Lysovenko, Ekaterina Muromtseva, Henrike Naumann, Navaridas & Deutinger, Boris Nikitin, Igor Friedrich Petković, Nihad Nino Pušija, Mykola Ridnyi, Willem de Rooij, Augustas Serapinas, Theater im Bahnhof, Giacomo Veronesi, Ming Wong, Raed Yassin; herbst Cabaret with Verena Dengler, eSeL (Lorenz Seidler), and Les Trucs
Artists from the collection of Neue Galerie Graz
Archduke Karl Stephan of Austria, Tina Blau, József Borsos, Hugo Cordignano, Constantin Damianos, Josef Danhauser, Sandro De Alexandris, Leo Diet, Anny Dollschein, Margarethe Donnersberg, DRAGO (Dragoš Kalajić), Franz Ehrenhöfer, Georg Eisler, Zea Fio, Emanuel Fohn, Hans Fronius, Krzysztof Glass, Gabriel von Hackl, Friedrich Holzhausen, Karl Jirak, Ludwig Kainzbauer, Eduard Klenk, Alois Krenn, Axl Leskoschek, Hans Mauracher, Wilhelm Mende, Dušan Minovski, Leopold Carl Müller, Anton Nowak, Adolf Pirsch, Carl Pischinger, Rudolf Pointner, Johann Gualbert Raffalt, Eugen von Ransonnet-Villez, Anton Romako, R. F. Rougon, Paul Schmidtbauer, Alois Schönn, Gustav Seyfferth, Fritz Silberbauer, Rudolf Spohn, Josef August Stark, Heinrich Stegemann, Karl Sterrer, Johann Wachtl, Franz Yang-Močnik
The festival is curated by Ekaterina Degot, Mirela Baciak, Dominik Müller, Christoph Platz, David Riff, Gábor Thury and created by the whole team of steirischer herbst. With curatorial advice by Goran Injac.
Curators of the exhibition in Neue Galerie Graz: Ekaterina Degot with David Riff, Christoph Platz, Mirela Baciak, Barbara Seyerl (steirischer herbst), with curatorial advice by Gudrun Danzer and Günther Holler-Schuster (Neue Galerie Graz / Universalmuseum Joanneum)
Press and professionals are now welcome to apply for accreditation for the opening days’ program as well as the performances and premieres during the festival.
For further information or questions, please contact the press department.
