Dear Friends of the Austrian Cultural Forum New York,
We are back with yet another edition of transforum, offering you recaps, articles, recordings, and videos of the Spring/Summer season’s highlights.
Our exhibition Fünf Räume brought six Austrian artists to New York, who are well-known in Europe, but had thus far not shown in the United States. Daniel Domig, Clemens Hollerer, Zenita Komad & Michael Kienzer, Valentin Ruhry, and Esther Stocker created five site specific installations that radically transformed the galleries of the Austrian Cultural Forum. Exhibition visitors had a rare opportunity to see the architecture of the five floors in a very different light. Valentin Ruhry’s piece Hello World even caused quite a commotion in the virtual world, when a blog about it went viral.
The musical highlight of last season was a concert by New York’s acclaimed Talea Ensemble, dedicated to the oeuvre of Austrian composer Olga Neuwirth. With this concert, we helped fill the gap left by what the New York Times’ Steve Smith called Neuwirth’s “woefully meager representation in mainstream American concert life” to date. Another noteable concert brought Austrian soprano Ursula Langmayr to the ACFNY, with a performance of Lieder accompanied by Russell Ryan, in what Zachary Woolfe deemed “perfect synchronization”.
In April, we worked closely with the Austrian Film Museum to bring the most important films by Russian master Dziga Vertov to New York’s MoMA for the first comprehensive New York restrospective dedicated to his genius. Vertov’s work is one of the cornerstones of the Film Museum’s collection, which is continuously being processed, restored, and evaluated by scholars from around the world. Artforum dedicated a long article to the MoMA retrospective, calling the filmmaker “Soviet cinema's greatest innovator of nonfiction films”.
I am also happy to report that our series of politically themed panel discussions have become a popular fixture in the Forum’s repertoire of events: Back in February, we presented Oliver Rathkolb’s seminal book on Austria, The Paradoxical Republic, with NYU’s Christine Lemke, and with guests such as esteemed scholars Istvan Deak and Rashid Khalidi. A lively debate emerged about xenophobia, hidden and open antisemitism, and about the paradoxical situation that a country that could not have behaved more European since 1995 (when it first joined the EU after the majority in a national referendum approved the move), today has one of the most skeptical and openly critical public opinions on the EU. Istvan Deak’s very sober and acerbic remarks about the situation of democracy in his home country of Hungary pointed toward the seemingly growing alienation between Pro-European political elites and electorates in Europe.
This theme continued in a panel discussion in June, with Max Preglau and David Bennett, who discussed the right-wing shift of politics in both the U.S. and Europe following the financial crisis of 2008: While the traditional Left appears surprised and lacking politically viable answers, the political Right seems to react with well-known strategies such as the repression of the state, gender questions, and of minorities.
Our fall season here at the Austrian Cultural Forum has just kicked off with the spectacular opening of our new exhibition, Beauty Contest, which will be on view through January 3, 2012 (open daily, 10AM – 6PM). This past September’s third annual Moving Sounds Festival also included wonderful performances which the New York Times deemed “Imaginatively reconceived and graciously performed”, among other things. And in the latest installment of our panel discussions, eminent scholars Sonja Puntscher-Riekmann and Benjamin Barber discussed the most recent developments with regard to the debt crisis in Europe. Look forward to coverage of these highlights in the next installment of transforum!
As always, I encourage you to browse through our website, become a member of our library, follow us on Facebook or Twitter, and last but definitely not least: come and meet us here at the ACFNY!
Yours warmly,
Andreas Stadler
October 2011
