- Director Stadler with Austrian Minister of Education and Culture Claudia Schmied
Dear Friends of the Austrian Cultural Forum New York,
The Austrian Cultural Forum New York is proud to launch its new website!
Following a thorough redesign, the new website features online reservations using state-of-the-art technology, and provides a much improved user experience, among other things. We invite you to explore and enjoy our new virtual home!
Is the model of the artist obsolete ?
We started the 2009 fall season with not one, but two, important symposia. First, we looked at critical practices and strategies in media art together with the Vienna based World Information Institute. The objective was to find out exactly how much freedom still exists in the hyper-commercialized digital world today, where it is at risk, and how we can expand it. While we raised more questions than anybody could answer, it became clear that the notion of “art” is being seriously redefined in today´s digital world. The modern model of the “artist” or “author” which developed since the early nineteenth century and became almost fetishized is becoming more and more meaningless or even obsolete in some areas.
Moving Sounds: Remix videos, violins and laptops!
As a second event, the Austrian Cultural Forum launched “Moving Sounds” this year, a new festival that explores the conflicts, potentials, and intersections between electronic and classically instrumentalized contemporary music. Together with the Argento Ensemble, Le Poisson Rouge, and the Vienna-based Music Information Center mica, we brought together leading composers and electronic performers so they could not only present their latest sound creations, but also reflect on them at meetings, parties, and a symposium.
The massive turnout of new music lovers and the rave reviews by among others the New York Times reassured my assumption: while electronically generated music has been conquering clubs, concert halls, labels, and above all the Internet, contemporary, classically instrumentalized music also has been experiencing a renaissance of its own in the past few years ! It looks like the active listening experience and reflection of sound, as opposed to background music, is back on the agenda. Possibly, it is exactly this concentration on music and the conscious experience of it, which represents our personal and collective struggle against the global phenomenon of sensory overload.
On a personal note, I strongly supported an initiative by this year´s European Capital of Culture, Linz, to create “noise free zones”. I think it is worthwhile to defend our lives from the constant exposure to “sound” in order to save some time and energy to actually actively engage in it!
Necessity is the mother of invention: Video exhibitions instead of paintings and installations
We have both good and bad news for visitors to our gallery. Our summer exhibition dedicated to the veil (“The Seen and the Hidden:[Dis]covering the Veil”) generated more important discussions and critiques than any other show in the history of the Cultural Forum. The artistic and intellectual analysis of our Western view of this piece of clothing was a positive surprise for critics and journalists as well as the public. It´s all the more regrettable that – due to a severe budget cut – we won´t be able to present the finished catalog for several weeks yet. And we also had to cancel a major exhibition on net pioneers and net art planned for this fall with the Linzer Institut für Medienkunst. We too have been hit by the crisis.
And yet, thanks to the cooperation of our artists, curators and creative partners and the support of our sponsors, we are able to offer an exciting program!
For the entire fall season, the gallery will be wholly dedicated to video art, a tremendously important and still growing artistic discipline.
Sound:Frame:Remix shows the latest and best videos from the unique and highly successful Viennese VJ festival sound:frame, and is curated by the festival´s creator, Eva Fischer. The month of November will be dedicated to the sea change of 1989: We will be presenting a selection of videos from an exhibition at the Vienna Kunsthalle named after that momentous year. It will be accompanied by discussions and lectures as well as a documentary exhibition at the ACFNY that will also be shown in New Orleans, Washington, and at Columbia University.
Events celebrating Sigmund Freud and Ludwig Wittgenstein will honor these perhaps most important Austrian thinkers of the 20th century and their lasting importance in the 21st century. Our program will also include literary events featuring authors Zdenka Becker, Franzobel, Josef Haslinger, Michael Stavaric and Monika Wogrolly. Our film series at the ACF have been reorganized and will be continued together with Film Anthology Archives and other art house movie theaters in New York and elsewhere.
Finally, we invite you to come to the Forum for this season´s concerts focusing among others on the Joseph Haydn Bicentennial. Other highlights are a first major portrait of the internationally acclaimed composer Toshio Hosokawa in the US, as well as the return of the Hugo Wolf Quartett to the ACF in late October and of Dennis Russell Davies in early November. At the same time we are happy to continue our Jazz series with Joe´s Pub and Jazz Standard in cooperation and with active support from Porgy & Bess, the Vienna based and world famous Jazz Club. As always, I also hope that you will to visit our beautiful and inspiring library !
Best wishes,
Andreas Stadler
- "No Budget", by Tex Rubinowitz
