Dear Friends
of the Austrian Cultural Forum New York,
Dear Voters,
You may not have expected to see the second salutation here, but it just so happens that both the Americans and the Austrians will be heading for the voting booths this fall. It's a periodically recurring opportunity to discuss fundamental social trends and either confirm or reject the actions and styles of the power elites. Artists and academics take a particularly avid interest in political cultural discourse. After all, consciously and intentionally or unconsciously and unintentionally, their creative work always has something to do with renewal and change, and hence necessarily with politics. It is increasingly surprising just how much the Web 2.0 phenomenon is enabling new methods of political communication and political culture. Anyone who is pursuing nothing more than lobbyism may well be on the wrong boat. It's all about lifestyle, peer groups, and local rhizomatic networks that prefer to keep their distance from the big media conglomerates. The style and aesthetics of the election campaigns are more important than ever, often overshadowing realistic political expressions. But it appears that the big political ideas are becoming fashionable again too. The debates at the Cultural Forum will therefore increasingly focus on the structural analysis of democracy as well as on relations between Europe and the USA.
Austria:
From concordance to competitive democracy?
Many analysts agree that that the government form of the "big coalition" that ran Austria until 1966 and then again between 1986 and 2000 has become questionable from the perspective of democratic policy. The most important motivations behind it - reconstruction after the war and later the accession to the European Union - no longer apply as a justification for coalition among the leading political camps. More and more political scientists suggest that Austria, like the USA, for example, should make the step from a concordance democracy to a competitive democracy. The big political camps should receive clear majorities in parliament and continuously alternate their positions in the government-opposition game - if necessary by resorting to the majority voting system.
The last big coalition government had fundamentally drifted apart after one and a half years. There wasn't enough time for major democratic reforms. Austria's two largest parties, the Social Democratic Party (SPOE) and the People's Party (OEVP), only managed - among other minor changes - to extend legislative periods from four to five years. Some observers wonder whether this is really an accomplishment. So the debate revolving around the democratic system remains one of the highest priorities on the agenda.
A European referendum?
The European Union has had relatively low approval ratings in the recent past. One of the things that triggered the new elections 2 thats was the demand of the SPOE that in the future changes to the European Union Treaty should be subject to a referendum. Because this is also supposed to apply to accessions (the next candidates are Croatia and Turkey), it would make the further development of the European Union impossible without the express approval of the people. The demand was vehemently rejected by the OEVP, and also by the Green Party.
So far, Austria has unsuccessfully suggested a pan-European referendum - in contrast to individual referenda in the Member States. This also corresponds to one of the central concepts behind democratic theory: ideally everyone who is affected by decisions of a political system should also be able to control the system through codetermination. This need not necessarily be accomplished by direct democracy; representative democracy will also do. If, then, the European Union already
represents a unique and independent political system, it also has to question in what form the European people can best be involved in decisions of fundamental importance. A pan-European referendum would certainly be a suitable means for strengthening the legitimacy of the EU.
Lesson from history for democracy?
In an essay for the New York Review of Books, Tony Judt made the weighty accusation that the lessons of the 20th century have been forgotten, especially in the USA. He said that this is one of the reasons why the USA is losing moral authority worldwide. The images from Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo reflected the country's lack of respect for human rights, and this, Judt wrote, is detracting from its important leadership function on the basis of its exemplary role and is damaging American interests over the long term as a consequence. What happens if we take these statements and transfer them to Austria and Europe? To historically interested observers, the year 2008 offers a number of milestone anniversaries with numerous occasions for commemoration and remembrance. So there are plenty of chances for reflecting on history and its lessons for the state of our democracy.
1918 and the transfiguration of history
For one thing, we have the 90-year anniversary of the end of World War I, a conflict that broke up the Old Europe into many small parts and among other things caused it to lose its position of world supremacy. Austro-Hungary was only able to enjoy a brief blossoming of modernism at the turn of the century with Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele, Gustav Mahler and Arnold Schoenberg, Joseph Schumpeter and Sigmund Freud. The often glorified view of Vienna 1900 today tends to distort the total perspective: the beautiful Jugendstil era was also a time of exploitation, poverty, and epidemics, of hunger and the revolutionary workers movement with its battles for democratic and social rights. Vienna was also an explosive melting pot where in many quarters Czech, Polish, Serbo-Croatian, Ukrainian, and Yiddish were spoken rather than German. Many people ended up in the slums of the industrial towns with the hope for a better life, and many dreamed of moving on to the New World as quickly as possible.
The parallels to the present are patently obvious. The collapse of the Iron Curtain nearly twenty years ago and the global migration patterns have once again changed today's Austrian society from the ground up. From a political and cultural perspective, Austria has shifted from the fringe of democratic Western Europe and landed smack in the middle of the continent. More than a quarter of the population once again has a history of migration, meaning they were not born in Austria. Vienna has become a small New York - a vibrant city with rich ethnic mixes. You will find this changed cultural reality reflected both in our exhibitions and in our musical program.
1938 and phantom pain
After World War I, the cultural variety soon came to an end and Austria became a small country: "Ce qui reste" (all that remains). Cultural diversity was no longer viewed as a strength but as the root of all problems. The web of tension of modernism engendered anti-modernism, anti-Semitism, totalitarianism, and racism. These "isms" of the 20th century came to a head in 1938 with the Anschluss and the rise to power of National Socialism. Like a phantom pain, the unbelievable blood-letting in the wake of exile, displacement, and murder remains a vivid memory to this day. While Austria lost a good part of its wealth of talent along with the loss of its diversity, many of the displaced emigres found a new home in the USA. As we will show in the film series Habsburgs Go Hollywood, the film and music industry in the USA were enriched in a scope that cannot be underestimated as of the 1930s and 40s thanks to immigrating Austrians and Central Europeans.
1968 and women
The 1968 generation rebelled against the suppression of the bitter truth of National Socialism as well as its authoritarian heritage. By then at the latest the cultural threads and the political and social experiences of Europe and America were reunited. The Vietnam War, left radicalism, the hippie generation, and above all women's push for equality were the buzzwords for more than a decade. What started as outright "feminism" soon made its way into the institutional arena.
Today, gender politics are no longer a controversial issue, but above all an overarching political principle that attempts to give women more room in society. The gay and lesbian movements in the USA and Europe also joined forces to liberate sexuality and sexual orientation from overly narrow moral and legal restrictions. Queer theory is rarely missing from any social or cultural science curriculum these days. We will be addressing all of these topics this coming fall. The individual courage
of artists to engage in social and cultural change is the subject of both exhibitions at the Cultural Forum. Perhaps the world's best woman painter after WWII, Maria Lassnig, will be presented in a first solo exhibition in the USA at the Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati. Painting, of course, is traditionally a male-dominated discipline where the strong egos of the painter lords only unwillingly gave their female counterparts a chance. How else could we understand why it was not until the last twenty years that research has finally focused on the vastly underrated role of woman painters in art history? Anyone more interested in the subject will appreciate the exhibition on Soshana presented at the Yeshiva University Museum in New York.
We hope our events and partnership programs resonate with you. Austria's cultural scene - like the entire country - is exciting, diverse, and even contradictory. And if you want to know more or just want to read a good book, stop by our wonderful library and experience a calmer and slower pace for a while.
- Andreas Stadler
