Horror Patriae

Horror Patriae, the 57th edition of steirischer herbst festival, stands up against the normalized benevolent nationalism that is celebrated in the shape of roots and traditions by nations and communities, large and small. It aims to dismantle their so-called authenticities and make a case for fictitious scenarios as spaces of artistic imagination. Taking place from September 19 to October 13 in Graz and Styria, Austria, the festival’s works in different media, from installation to sculpture to performance, offer vantages to rethink the current rise of ultranationalism and mild xenophobia in all of its forms.

The central site of this year’s festival is a museum, historically a factory for nation-building. steirischer herbst’s main exhibition (a cooperation with Neue Galerie Graz) envisions an alternative museum of national complexes and dark imaginaries organized into several departments. Staging encounters between objects from the various collections of Austria’s oldest museum—the Universalmuseum Joanneum—with contemporary artists’ works, mostly new commissions, the exhibition examines how grand imperial fantasies coexist with the folksy fetishization of parochial homelands.

steirischer herbst ’24 opens with a weekend of performances, exhibitions, and discussions. The Lesliehof, once the courtyard of Styria’s county museum, provides the backdrop for the opening speech of festival director Ekaterina Degot and a new vocal piece by Natalia Pschenitschnikova. Departing from a cryptic medieval Austrian abbreviation, the artist and her collaborators explore the acronyms of today. The evening continues with the exhibition’s vernissage and music by Mélange Oriental. A new reinterpretation of the Austro-Hungarian operetta by the transnational collective La Fleur closes the night.

More newly commissioned performances continue throughout the opening days program. Yoshinori Niwa inhabits public space with a provocative piece directly related to the Austrian elections. In an immersive musical performance by Ari Benjamin Meyers with a new monologue by writer Tom McCarthy, children sing lullabies to adults. Augustin Maurs presents an evening of songs performed or co-opted by politicians and ruling powers, playing with musical and political dissonances. Clara Ianni presents the work that won her the Werner Fenz Grant for Art in Public Space, while an exhibition on a lesser-known “homeland” project of the late Graz-based curator Werner Fenz takes place at Forum Stadtpark.

Later in the program, stage productions and performances further develop the satirical rereading of the current political landscape. Franz von Strolchen joins a twelve-piece gamelan orchestra to create a docufictional musical slideshow about a Styrian football club that toured the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) in 1934. Marta Navaridas’s new performance offers a punk interpretation of Igor Stravinsky’s Firebird, questioning the nationalist and patriarchal structures embodied by doctrines of dance. A site-specific theater performance by Theater im Bahnhof takes the audience to the town of Knittelfeld, exploring the ultraright party congress held there more than two decades ago. Thomas Verstraeten creates an immersive experience in Graz’s largest fashion store, challenging the romanticized nostalgia for nature and its role in national identity–building. Felix Hafner and his ensemble reenact an evening of folk songs performed by a group of young modernist art students in 1925 at the Austrian Embassy in Addis Ababa.

The exhibitions and performances of Horror Patriae are accompanied by artist talks and discussions. Highlights include a series of discursive duels on controversial topics with Boris Buden, Keti Chukhrov, Eric Frey, Mahsa Ghafari, Thorsten Mense, Ingo Niermann, Hans-Peter Weingand, and Max Zirngast. 

For the third year in a row, steirischer herbst also turns to cabaret and its capacity for gritty, gutsy social criticism, with six new shows by László Göndör, hannsjana, Bernadette Laimbauer, Annina Machaz, Piotr Urbaniec, and Alex Franz Zehetbauer.

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 literary festival within steirischer herbst.

Participating artists include Sarnath Banerjee, Renate Bertlmann, Anna Boghiguian, Sergey Bratkov, Pablo Bronstein, Madison Bycroft, Ieva Epnere, VALIE EXPORT, La Fleur, Peter Friedl, Robert Gabris, Tomislav Gotovac, Assaf Gruber, Felix Hafner, Jan Peter Hammer, Thomas Hörl, Clara Ianni, Jakub Jansa, Nikolay Karabinovych, Alina Kleytman, David Kranzelbinder, Augustin Maurs, Mélange Oriental, Ari Benjamin Meyers, Marta Navaridas, Ingo Niermann and Erik Niedling, Yoshinori Niwa, Paulina Ołowska, Michèle Pagel, Hannes Priesch, Natalia Pschenitschnikova, Roee Rosen, Daniel Rycharski, Franz von Strolchen, Marko Tadić, Theater im Bahnhof, Helene Thümmel, Piotr Urbaniec, Thomas Verstraeten, Andreas Werner

Artists from the Neue Galerie Graz collection: AES+F, András Felvidéki, Wolf Gössler, Hans Werner Poschauko, Drago Julius Prelog, Paolo Tessari, Norbert Trummer, Franco Vaccari, and others

steirischer herbst ’24 is curated by Ekaterina Degot, David Riff, Gábor Thury, and Pieternel Vermoortel and created by the festival’s whole team.

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