1995

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"The conceptual design of nomadism has only marginally to do with global refugee movements. What is rather involved is picking up new viewpoints of an intellectual mobility, an interdisciplinary actually lived, a ‘nomadisier sensibility’ (Peter Strasser), which on the one hand reflect the socio-political context of contemporary art and cultural behavior, and which on the other are direct against the either-or-fixation of seemingly disparate disciplines in art, science, technology, political science etc.
Vilém Flusser saw his task for the future on the coordination of competencies, in experiencing and entering various fields of possibility. steirischer herbst has taken this nomadic principle as its creed for the first half of the nineties: ‘Art is over, the game goes on. The game is over, art goes on.’”
—Horst Gerhard Haberl (original booklet translation)

Haberl’s time as artistic director came to an end in 1995 with the suggestively summarizing overarching theme of Die Kunst ist aus, das Spiel geht weiter. Das Spiel ist aus, die Kunst geht weiter” (Art Is Over, But the Game Goes On: The Game Is Over, But Art Goes On). Two years before, in cooperation with Peter Strasser, he had created a concept for a content-related restructuring of steirischer herbst, which was connected with the planned construction of a new Kunsthaus in Graz and based on the insight that “the limited duration of a festival does not suffice to present future-oriented aesthetic issues or corresponding objects of interdisciplinary research and make them readable.” According to Haberl, the concept foundered due to the party-political pragmatism on the regional level.

steirischer herbst ’95 opened at the Thalia theater with the keynote speech “Kunst und Spiel im Todestrakt” (Art and Play on Death Row) by Jan Arriens, followed by the premieres of Bodo Hell’s Herr im Schlaf (Gentleman Asleep)—according to its subtitle, a “grab into emblematic everyday theater”—and Connie Beckley’s music piece The Aquarium. Another commissioned work was Christoph Schlingensief’s theater project Hurra, Jesus! Ein Hochkampf (Hurray, Jesus! An Extreme Struggle) at the Schauspielhaus—according to the theater critic Wolfgang Kralicek, the “funniest evening that he had ever experienced during steirischer herbst.”1

Within the framework of musikprotokoll ’95, a dozen concerts were performed and artistic works by Peter Ablinger and Alvin Lucier were presented at the Neue Galerie under the theme Das Rauschen (Background Noise). The event series “Echtzeit” (Real Time), which was dedicated to youth culture and subculture, presented, among other things, a performance by Stelarc, concerts by Krab (La Fura dels Baus) and Les Tambours du Bronx, and a hip-hop jam. The numerous special projects included the series “Projekte Architektur” (Architecture Projects) with an international competition. Along with the end of Haberl’s artistic direction, the trigon biennial also took place for the last time with Peter Weibel’s exhibition Quasi per Gioco—Das Spiel in der Kunst (Games in Art), which focused on Italy.

Program