Dear Friends and Partners of the AUSTRIAN CULTURAL FORUM NEW YORK,
You are reading the second issue of the ACF's new magazine transforum. We have been able to expand our readership significantly in the past few months and are happy to report that the online version is now sent to more than 6,000 subscribers. I would like to thank all of you for your constructive criticism as well as for your praise.
...Under Pain of Death
Looking back, the first months of the year 2008 were very intense for us, but very successful as well. Our exhibition Under Pain of Death attracted a record-breaking number of visitors and was critiqued in detail in the New York Times. The Village Voice and Time Out included it in their Best Gallery Show and Staff Pick listings. Many visitors left personal and written comments that are tremendously valuable and helpful for our work.
...and music
Among the many concerts and lied recitals we have staged, the performance with Wolfgang Holzmayr and Russel Ryan was especially memorable. Their impassioned and exciting concert featuring music by composers incarcerated and later murdered in Theresienstadt concentration camp brought us back to a time when artistic creativity was destroyed on the basis ofracist prejudices. This concert, the documentary film series curated by the Austrian Film Museum, and the lecture given by Oliver Rathkolb - all in commemoration of the year 1938 and its consequences - brought many visitors to the Forum who had been themselves victims of the Nazi regime. Persecuted and expelled for political or racial reasons, they continued to maintain their connection with Austria. We are pleased to be able to cultivate contacts with the generation of emigrants as well as their children and grandchildren.
Hermann Nitsch and Andreas Stadler | Presentation of "Blood Orgies" | April 10, 2008 at the ACFNY
... sports for the masses and cultural reflection
Looking ahead to the summer, our next exhibition, Bread and Soccer: in the Arena of Art, will address the subject of of crowds and power and sports events, among other things inspired by the writings of Elias Canetti. This topic is especially pertinent today, against the backdrop of trans-formation of the worldwide journey of the eternal Olympic flame into a mass media marketing campaign. I cannot discuss issues of human rights with regard to Tibet in this context. However, witnessing the way the torch is idolized and honored like a guest of state calls for critical reflection. The question remains whether these phenomena in fact have any-thing to do anymore with the original Olympic concept of sports and peace. But the discussion of mixing politics with sports and business with media, and the examination of the impact of sensory overload and subliminal suggestion, are not only relevant in conjunction with the Olympics in Beijing. The impending European Soccer Championship, a mega event that in terms of media coverage ranks third after the Olympics and the World Cup, gives artists and academics plenty of food for thought as well. We need to look at the how and why behind the organization and control of the mass production of cultural symbolism today.
...dance, performance, and transversality
For the first time, we will also be focusing our activities on dance and performance. In cooperation with the New York Movement Research Festival and Tanzquartier Wien (TQW), a number of Austrian and New York perfor-mance artists and groups were selected to explore the topic of transversality from the perspective of performance art. Transversality is a term that hasto do with overcoming autistic disciplines, national boundaries, and the often instrumentalized relationship between politics and art.
... Library
We would also like to invite you to visit the ACF Library. It offers a comprehensive collection of Austriaca, Austrian literature, and art catalogues that has been steadily growing since 1965. We are continuously working on cataloguing the collection online and adding a selection of films and music recordings. The library's intellectual richness and the serene ambience of the 4th and 5th floor let you forget the hectic pace of Manhattan.
... Partnerships
We are especially pleased that a modular house designed by the Vorarlberg architectural firm of Oskar Leo Kaufmann and Albert Ruef will be represented at the MOMA exhibition Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling. The show starts on July 15.
Finally, I'd like to invite you, as our partners in New York and many others tates throughout the USA, to actively cooperate with the ACF. In the coming months and years we will be concentrating on building on our excel-lent reputation for bringing events, exhibitions, and concerts to the Forum by introducing an increasing variety of cooperative projects as a second main stay of our activities. We are looking forward to working closely with museums, galleries, concert halls, universities, and music academies in New York and all other cultural centers in the USA.
Warm regards,
Andreas Stadler, Director
