Dear Friends of the Austrian Cultural Forum New York,
1979/1989/2009
Numbers are magical. Who would have dared to hope it just yesterday? An American president comes to Europe and Turkey "to listen" and calls for a world without nuclear weapons. Europe and the USA meet eye to eye and search for shared solutions to the big problems. Beyond the economic crisis, this also includes addressing relations with the Muslim-Arab societies. Too many misunderstandings have piled up since events like the Iranian revolution thirty years ago.
Our European-American perception of the "Orient" - itself a doubtful questionable simplification - is based on many wrong assumptions such as the idea that the veil is a typical symbol of Islam. We can find the veil in the Torah and the Old Testament of the Bible as well as in the Koran, and of course the veil is an elementary bridal accoutrement in Europe and elsewhere. Just like hats, headscarves are an important element in European, Middle Eastern, and American culture. And for example Mozart's "Rondo Aalla Turca," as another example, reminds us that Islamic culture is in itself an integral part of our own, European-American culture. This is why the ACF decided to participate in the festival Muslim Voices with an exhibition on this so frequently misunderstood piece of clothing. What a delicate transcultural learning process it has been!
Who would have dared to hope it twenty years ago? The Iron Curtain came down as the dictatorial regimes of Central and East European communism were swept away one after the other in the wake of mass protests. Within a few years, democratic constitutions and market economy structures were introduced. Countries from Estonia to Slovenia became independent and acceded to the European Union. Even after the bloody civil wars in the former Yugoslavia, the official perspective today is that the entire Balkan region, including Bosnia and Herzegovina, will be admitted to the EU.
Even though the borders still haven't disappeared in many people's minds, most of the dividing lines within Europe have been dissolved by now, at least within the European Union. Austria has played an active role in this process and has undergone some fundamental changes of its own. In the course of globalization, Austria, the almost monocultural "island of the blessed" of the 1970s, transformed into a culturally vibrant country, and its capital city, Vienna, has almost become as much of a melting pot as it was in 1900, or like New York still is today. It's more common now for our Austrian artists and intellectuals to have Slavic, Arabic, Turkish, Hungarian, Chinese, and other names. And yet, alongside Serbian bean soup, sushi, kebabs, and dim sum, we all love Griessnockerlsuppe (semolina dumpling soup) and Apfelstrudel as much as ever.
We'd like to thank you, our readers and subscribers, for your growing confidence and look forward to your personal involvement with contemporary thought and creativity from Austria.
Best wishes,
Andreas Stadler
Director
