1990

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“With the Nomadology of the Nineties the steirischer herbst wants to bring about a transition to the culture of mobility as a possible third way beyond the avant-garde and post-modern. The Graz philosopher, Peter Strasser, characterizes the path of a nomadizing sensibility thus: it ‘would try to grasp art, technology, science and religion equally, as manifestations of the essence of the human being … Such a sensibility would animate the dead vision of the “totally different”, in that it avails itself of all those languages which human reason devised, in order to bring forth something like a view of life, a world picture.’
Up, and, away: that is the first leitmotif. For the progression to new cultural pastures (Greek nomas, the pasture-seeker) in view of grazed ‘Festival fields’.
Up, and, away: the punctuation also refers to the reflexive, to an escape, to possibilities which permit hope again—as defined by this year’s opening speaker, Vilém Flusser: ‘The possession of concept is madness to nomads. And to the settled, undefined rambling around in experience is meaningless claptrap.’ But: ‘We no longer see a void, but (although invisible) areas of interrelation.’”
—Horst Gerhard Haberl (original booklet translation)

The overarching theme of steirischer herbst ’90 under its second artistic director, Horst Gerhard Haberl, who had already been connected with the festival since 1974 through curatorial projects as well as the pool group, was auf, und, davon (Up, and, Away). The basic principle of Haberl’s time as artistic director was a “nomadology of the 1990s,” with which steirischer herbst was to lead the way to a “culture of mobility” as a “possible third path beyond the avant-garde and postmodernism.”1

The philosopher Vilém Flusser, who was the most important theoretical influence for Haberl’s concept besides Peter Strasser, gave the keynote speech at the opening. The opening was held at a new venue, the impressive assembly hall of an old tram depot, which was also used for musikprotokoll. In line with a doing away with boundaries to the spectrum of sound, numerous works, some of which had been composed specifically for this location, including works by Karlheinz Essl, Peter Eötvös, and Christian Muthspiel, premiered under the motto “Raum und Licht” (Space and Light). Corresponding to the nomadic principle of the tent, an architecture competition for a mobile event hall as a “symbol of cultural and intellectual mobility” was organized at the Alte Remise. Café Paradox—a Contribution to Expo 95 took place at the Neue Remise.

The photo exhibition Die Sehnsucht der Pinguine (The Longing of Penguins) by Willy Puchner, which also provided the poster motif, was presented at Palais Attems. In addition to the music and literature symposia and the Symposium on Photography XI, there were also symposia on Arno Schmidt, on the literature of the Grazer Gruppe (titled Trans-Garde), and on solar power (held by the University of Graz) in 1990. In public space, there was the project Platz machen! Zur Umgestaltung des Fischplatz (Make Room! On the Redesign of Fischplatz), with various designs and interventions for the square that is now called Andreas-Hofer-Platz.

Program