A history of more than forty years has firmly embedded the festival Steirischer Herbst in the consciousness of the Austrian city of Graz. Its current leitmotif, ‘All the Same: What Is Valid if Everything Is Equal and Valid', operates as a node rather than an overarching theme, as a tool demanding further and concrete exploration. More than 600 artists, curators, choreographers, dramaturges, philosophers, theoreticians and professionals from 37 nations have been involved in the festival's realisation.

Accordingly, multiple spaces, such as the internet - e.g. in ‘Randnotizen', a net-based diary with contributions by Dan Perjovschi or Stefan Kaegi - provide platforms for artistic production. Also Lara Almarcegui's ‘Hidden Terrain with Abandoned Allotments' (2009), appearing in a local newspaper, negotiates, or populates, a ‘public space'. Furthermore, the festival team develops processual formats for theory and knowledge production distinguishing its Herbst Academy from traditional educational institutions.

As for the visual arts, ‘Utopia and Monument: On the Validity of Art between Privatisation and the Public Sphere', commissioned by the festival itself, was also curated for the public space. Understanding ‘utopia' and ‘monument' as reflections on society - the former as a space for thought and longing, the latter as one for memory and histories past - the curator poses questions concerning these contradictory concepts. In the first part of the two-year project, artists investigate the concepts in terms of notions of equality and indifference towards the ownership of public spaces. Can these spaces still be considered of significance for a political debate and subsequent actions or does art stand in line with commercial strategies being perceived as ‘All the Same'?

MASCOTS

The town hall was the core of this project, as well as of Graz' city centre; its renaissance court hosted Andreas Siekmann's installation ‘Trickle Down: The Public Space in the Age of Its Privatisation' (2007-2009). In this work, city mascots embody urban competitions and branding strategies. They serve to unfold ongoing processes in the transformation of public spheres towards the concatenation of power structures, touristification and privatisation. Beyond the wracking and butchering of the fibreglass mascots, the research-based installation depicts the political-economic machinery, its language and spatial production transforming public spaces: e.g., ‘Public Enemy' generating a surveillance apparatus or ‘Private-Public Partner vs. Public-Private Partnerships'.
Contentwise and spatially located at the city government's centre, Siekman's project operates as a backdrop for Dolores Zinny and Juan Maidagan's ‘Curtain Call for Graz' (2009). The installation of a monumental curtain in ceremonial colours mounted in front of the town hall's portico addresses spectacularisation not only within the town hall but also in the main square in front of it. The square increasingly manifests current competitive urban conditions: the city's festivalisation.
Nils Norman responds to the curatorial invitation with a concrete experiment geared away from neo-liberal, late capitalism towards an urban social utopia. His installation ‘Public Workplace Playground Sculpture for Graz' (2009) has the potential to facilitate multiple ‘publics': playing, providing shelter, working or engaging in debates. A wooden multi-functional construction and a DIY ‘rocket oven' sit on an empty base in the Volksgarten, a park - due to rising crime and drug dealing rates and widely populated by homeless people and migrants - increasingly perceived as a no-go zone. Situating this experimental platform in such a neighbourhood invites a reading beyond a gesture towards activating an alternative social space to come.

URBAN

This is also the interest of <rotor>. The exhibition and two-year project ‘Annenviertel: The Art of Urban Intervention' reveals and initiates concrete social processes in a specific urban district. Its triggering question can be formulated as: what can be won from deriving a gentrification-value-scale out of the actual neighbourhood? Methods and strategies for this urban exploration - developing the festival's leitmotif towards a defined territorial and social field - range from a local radio programme or newspaper, walks and workshops run by local people, artistic projects, to theory-based events and debates. This transversal approach inviting collaborators from multiple social spheres triggers processes to rethink urban life on a micro-scale. As its title already points out, the problematics of such an undertaking are epitomized in Pravdoliub Ivanov's ‘Transformation Always Takes Time and Energy' (2000) - thirty pots on electric cookers evaporating water.
Camera Austria takes up the leitmotif by showing Arthur Zmijewski's ‘Democracies' and Other Works. Indifference for, and ambivalence of, political actions in public spaces are engendered by ‘Democracies (2007-2009)', a video installation of 20 lined up screens, amplified through a soundscape of agitated murmur, already indicating multiple voices. The installation addresses freedom in the context of shortcomings in so-called ‘democracies' and their multiple notions in Europe and the Middle East: from Jörg Haider's, the Austrian extreme right-wing party's leader's, funeral; the re-enactment of the first battles of the Warsaw uprising, to mass demonstrations against Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip and the according counter-demonstrations. Without proposing a pre-packaged value system, Zmijewski neutrally juxtaposes political counter positions. This emphasis on value-free political heterogeneity shifts the theoretical debate towards the citizens' motivation to act politically, which is explored by Zmijewski's documentary strategy of being with, and not reporting about, political events.

MEDIA

Investigations on media critique and contemporary communication culture are the points of departure for the show ‘Talk Talk' at the Kunstverein Medienturm. Twenty-five film and video works investigate the interview as artistic practice, analysing notions of power-relations, representational techniques or mise-en-scènes of concealment. Works by Andrea Fraser, Klub Zwei, Ursula Biemann, Jochen Gerz or Antoni Muntadas transgress the simple play of question and answer. Hence, the show negotiates language and interrogates the role of talking itself as well as its different forms. Yvon Chabrowski's work deletes the background to scrutinize the medial strategies entangling representational modes and public interest. In ‘An interview with H.R.H. The Princess of Wales' (2008) she restages, imitates and modifies Diana's last interview in a clinical white cube. Such works, as the festival on the whole, confronts the visitor with the crises of equality within societies, posing the question to which extend various positions are equal, or equally valid, or to which extend ‘All Is the Same'?

Margit NEUHOLD
lives in Graz and London, she is currently working as an independent curator and critic.

‘All the same: What is valid if everything is equal and valid', Steirischer Herbst, Graz ran from September 23th to October 17th 2009.