For the first edition of steirischer herbst under the artistic direction of Ekaterina Degot, the festival plans to collaborate with the Serbian artist Milica Tomić on an exhibition called “Exhibiting at the Trowel’s Edge” and the Hungarian artist-duo Igor and Ivan Buharov on a new site-specific installation and performance called “Eternal intentionfield tuning”
Milica Tomić’s work will address memorialization practices that look towards research and investigative processes. Concentration camps like Auschwitz or Mauthausen are famous sites to commemorate the atrocities of the Nazis, while less is said or remembered officially about the many crimes committed systematically in the network of labor- and sub-camps, which were dispersed evenly across the regions of NS-occupied Europe during World War II.
One such camp in the southern Styrian village of Aflenz an der Sulm is the focus of an ongoing research project by artist Milica Tomić. There, from 1943–45, inmates from Mauthausen and forced laborers worked alongside regular factory employees producing airplane parts in an underground factory nearby. Little remains of the camp today, whose site is overlooked by residential buildings and at first glance appears to be not much more than an empty field. Working along the lines of forensic archeology, Tomić searches for a commemorative language beyond official monumental aesthetics for this (non)site. Her specially-developed project for steirischer herbst presents a first iteration of this work in progress.
Milica Tomić
21.9.–14.10.: Exhibiting at the Trowel’s Edge. Spatial dislocation and a temporal cut of research and investigative processes of Aflenz Memorial in becoming (2018), Installation
Forum Stadtpark
Stadtpark 1
8010 Graz
With a background in cinema, visual arts and music Igor and Ivan Buharov will turn Volkshaus, the Graz headquarters of the Communist Party of Austria, into an anarchist laboratory of the revolution-to-come, where interspecies exchange will finally be achieved. Plants have the most widespread and nuanced networks of communication, the artists claim, and therefore in times of mass surveillance, they may well be our best allies in seeking out new channels for secure communication and data transfer.
Drawing on extrasensory practices as well as theories of bioenergetics and electromagnetics, the Buharovs deploy a dizzyingly broad range of transcultural references—from obsidian mirrors, used as tools of divination in Mesoamerican cultures, to esoteric western inventions such as the Tesla disk.
The installation is kicked off by a surrealistic audiovisual performance developed together with the Buharovs’ closest associates, a multitalented cast of artists, musicians, and performers from Hungary. Alongside their new work, a video installation at Volkshaus features their recent Most of the souls that live here (2016).
Igor and Ivan Buharov
9/21 –10/14: Most of the souls that live here (2016), Film
9/21, 9:30pm: Eternal intentionfield tuning (2018), Performance
Volkshaus Graz
Lagergasse 98a
8020 Graz
steirischer herbst 2018
This year’s programme “Welcome to the Fronts” (“Volksfronten”) includes installations, performative and discursive works by more than 40 artists spread over more than 20 venues throughout the entire city. Almost all productions are newly commissioned and created specifically for this year’s edition.
In addition to Volksfronten, steirischer herbst is accompanied by a programme consisting of exhibitions and events of various institutions, and also by the musikprotokoll, a festival in the festival that has been an integral part of steirischer herbst since it was founded in 1968.
The entire program of steirischer herbst 2018 is available online.
