Dear Friends of ACFNY,
Welcome to the first edition of ACFNY's magazine transforum. Beyond the name change, our new publication will now be issued three times a year, first online and then in print.
The main purpose of transforum is to interest the public in the creative, modern, and new Austria and to invite people in the New York area as well as throughout the U.S. to visit and/or get involved with ACFNY.
I wrote the last Letter from the Editor for our predecessor publication austria.culture when I was still in Vienna. In the meantime, I've arrived in New York. I've gained a plethora of new impressions, and I've met many American artists and scientists who are fascinated by Austrian culture. This program was created with their input and it will continue to grow with them and with you, our readers.
There have been some staff changes at ACFNY as well. Natascha Boojar is the new Assistant to the Director and is at the same time in charge of exhibitions, and Maria Simma, our new Media and Communication Coordinator, also played a major role in the development of our new transforum magazine.
Together with our other colleagues, we consider this new beginning to be an opportunity and a challenge for ACFNY - both from the perspective of organization and programming. In this context, we have initiated a number of other changes:
- We have revised our mission statement (see website) to reflect our more contemporary and discursive focus.
- We have reorganized the space in the ACFNY building so that the 6th floor is now also available for seminars.
- We have developed a new program for you that we will be introducing with this publication.
We can be proud of Mozart and Schubert, and Klimt's achievements as a painter will never be forgotten. And of course we should still honor the great Austrians of the 20th century like Freud and Schönberg and mathematicians like Kurt Gödel.
But we also know that only tourism can live from the past. As the golden letters on the Vienna Secession proclaim, every era needs its art, and every art needs its freedom.
This is why we want to promote present-day art, aesthetics, and science as the cultural legacy of the future. Beyond Mozart and Freud, there is an Austria whose artists take on the challenges of New York and the USA to establish a position for themselves here in the cultural capital of the world.
For instance, the museum shop in the brand new home of the New Museum in New York carries books about no less than three Austrian artists: filmmaker Kurt Kren, artist Hermann Nitsch, and art theorist Gerald Raunig. Nitsch and Raunig will also be presented at ACFNY in the near future.
Another filmmaker, Michael Haneke, who was recently celebrated with rave reviews in the context of a retrospective at MOMA, will show up in spring with his remake of Funny Games.
We want to offer a platform to the creative artists who make present-day Austria so vibrant and exciting. This issue features an interview with writer Thomas Glavinic and an essay by political scientist Josef Melchior. You'll also find book tips and information about our exhibition, music, and film program, which among other things will be dedicated to the year 1938, a very difficult and disturbing time in Austria's past. This film and discussion series will be co-organized with the Leo Beck Institute in New York. Oliver Rathkolb, an outstanding historian and critic of Austria's approach to the past, will be on tour throughout the U.S. on our invitation.
Another objective of transforum is to serve as a platform for ACFNY's transdisciplinary and transnational approach to addressing issues that are both important and topical.
This is why the first exhibition in the new era at ACFNY will focus on the issue of how Austrian, American, and European artists respond to the issue of the death penalty. Although it has been abolished in the European Union, it is still a topic of heated debate in countries like the USA in particular.
Very often, artists address issues like this but fail to find the appropriate public venue to expose their work since many galleries and museums are limited by commercial constraints. ACFNY has both the mission and the potential to be a platform for artists who want to make a difference.
After all, art is an important factor in any open and free society. The next issue of transforum will include critiques and reviews on the exhibition, which opens on January 21.
I wish you all the best for the holidays and the New Year.
Andreas Stadler
