Austrian Cultural Forum NYC

KATHRIN RÖGGLA
MORE THAN A LANGUAGE-PUNK
Interview by Hannah Menne

In your book "really ground zero," you describe the events surrounding Sept. 11, 2001, as you witnessed them during your stay in New York. What's your relationship with this city, apart from the horrible terrorist attacks? The face of the USA has changed significantly since Sept. 11th. How do you see the USA today?

New York was the place, where I once desperately wanted to live; a magical city, where I was able to spend a summer at age 20. At that time I returned to Austria, because I didn't quite dare to actually make the move. Today I feel differently. These days Manhattan, especially, has become a city of money, of commerce. It seems to hold fewer secrets, to be devoid of dreams. Beyond that the USA has changed a lot through the Bush-era, there's a paranoid disposition that is reflected in all the new surveillance laws. The economic situation is precarious, too. The next 2-3 years will be exciting for the country. I am curious to see what the mood will be like in New York.

Throughout the course of your career you have become increasingly political. The organizer of the World Voices Festival, the American PEN Center, has supported persecuted authors from all over the world for years. How important is your political, or rather sociopolitical, commitment to you?

I'm not really sure how strong my socio-political commitment is. I give speeches in panel discussions, take part in discussion groups, do my intellectual work, and write essays, but personally I'm not that politically involved - not with regard to party membership or working for NGOs. The relationship between politics and literature is a delicate one. It deals with two distinct things, which nonetheless have a tense relationship to one another. When serving a strictly political function, the resulting literature can only be bad. It's only a stone's throw from agitprop.

You once wrote: "You will never discover true Austria, you will never understand true Austria, it is deep inside of us, and there it remains." True Austria: Do we Austrians even know what that is, understand ourselves? Is it important to you to be considered an Austrian author?

That was an ironic riposte to the debate about national identity that emerged in the 90s. In my youth we didn't have anything like that, at that time one had an ironic relationship to one's supposed Austrianness. The subject arose thereafter in Germany because of reunification, and a bit later in Austria. My world didn't make sense anymore. It was a strange retro-thing, at odds with the changes occurring in Europe, which turned more and more into the EU.
That I call myself an Austrian author stems predominantly from my close relationship to the literary tradition of the country. It is different from that of our German-speaking neighbors: very in love with language and simultaneously critical of it.

In 1992 you moved to Berlin. How much do those surroundings influence your writing? And to what degree does the geographic distance to Austria influence it?

The thing that's always fascinated me about Germany is its diversity on an economic and media-related level. Compared to Austria it's a heavyweight and the notion of structural violence only becomes comprehensible here. In Austria, due to its small size, all public issues are readily personalized, and political discussion often devolves into personal debates.
Berlin had a great allure for me. The old subculture of West Berlin and the Prenzlauer-Berg Scene of East Berlin captivated me. It was a promise of freedom that drew me to Berlin. I believed that I could live the way I wanted to there. It's a city, in which because of its immense real-estate vacancies and its low cost of living, many artistic projects are possible. In comparison, Vienna is still very bourgeois.

In "wir schlafen nicht" (we never sleep) a strong criticism of our economic system is evident. Do you feel validated by the current economic crisis? Can one even feel the crisis in the literary industry yet?

I suppose some publishers are doing poorly and the market for books is also pretty weak. But I don't really feel validated, because I never believed what is happening now could be possible. The change in the public discourse, that is, the call for government after all the neoliberal hegemony of the past years, is striking and I dare say somewhat liberating, because it shows, that societies are made up of people and therefore mutable. But one shouldn't presume that a new socialism will evolve out of this. As a pessimist, I rather foresee the opposite happening.

The use of lower case letters in your works is a very conspicuous stylistic device, which is reminiscent of the online culture of chat rooms, informal e-mails and the like. How much of an influence is today's internet-culture on your writing?

I find the blending of the spoken and the written highly thrilling. It's a hybridization of old forms of communication. Nevertheless, it is only indirectly linked to my decision to use only lower case letters. In my writing, I wanted to direct the focus on the social aspects of language. Less the language of a creator than one that individualizes us. Through language, a societally formed language, we learn to say I.

Your authentic description of the so-called "losers" of our society is indicative of close sociological scrutiny. You paint a picture in the style of investigative journalism that raises one finger in warning at the frauds and another in praise at civil courage. Did you ever, in the early stages of your career, fear that your political convictions would hinder you more than help you?

Well, I didn't really have a strategic career plan, like a banker might. When I began writing, I worked with experimental styles even more than now; admittedly the political pervasiveness of language was less at the forefront of my mind at the time. The somewhat more abstract experiment seemed to be enough for me. That is to say being a language-punk and describing feelings or attitudes was enough. As much as I still like my texts from that period, I have also distanced myself from them. This distance helped me, to put it ironically, not to become a one-hit-wonder, but rather move into an ever-growing public sphere and not let it intimidate me. And one shouldn't forget: ultimately, the finger-raising, that I hopefully don't do too much of, is also something that sells well in Europe.

The Intervention "flächenbrand" (wildfire) is on display on an illuminated banner on the outside of the Kunsthalle in Vienna until the end of March. How do you see the relationship between visual arts and literature?

Here too, a broad tradition exists in Austria, with Concrete Poetry. What I find exciting about visual art is that it takes context and framework into account and thematizes it. This is something that does not occur as often in literature.
Nevertheless, it's evident that written texts do not appear out of context or without medial awareness, but that their situational and medial framework, as well as perceptual habits thereof, help define them. To play with that is not only fun, but also part of the poetic process.

2009 PEN WORLD VOICES OF INTERNATIONAL LITERATURE
April 27 - May 3, 2009

For the fifth time, more than 150 writers from around the world will gather in New York to engage in conversations, readings, and performances. This year, World Voices, PEN American Center's festival of cosmopolitan, literary exchange, will take up the theme of Evolution/Revolution, and will be chaired by Salman Rushdie.

Austria will be represented by the Austrian Cultural Forum as well as a trio of contemporary novelists: Lilian Faschinger, Kathrin Röggla, and Norbert Gstrein. The latter two have been available in English translation for some years. Faschinger, a celebrated translator in her own right, has won international recognition with her novel Magdalena Sünderin (Magdalena the Sinner), which was translated into 17 languages. Gstrein, for his part, is renowned as an important storyteller and stylist of the German language, and finally seems to be gaining overdue international recognition for his work. Röggla, the youngest of the three, is a rising star in Austria. Her first book, we never sleep, is slated to appear in English later this year. These authors' participation in World Voices promises to provide a fascinating snapshot of a vibrant and dynamic literary scene.

WHERE TO MEET

LILIAN FASCHINGER
APRIL 30
GLOBAL VOICES
1 - 2:30 PM
Instituto Cervantes New York