1996

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“When the steirischer herbst festival 96, with its REMIX theme sets off in search of a culture of difference, drawing on a variety of examples of post-colonial art forms and questioning the complicity of Western/European conceptions of art in post-colonial and neo-colonial interests, then this search is to be understood not simply as an intervention ongoing debates on identity (be it at a national or European level)—the approaches taken by a great many artists living in Diaspora or working from former colonies, and the post-colonial critique of European modernism, demand that we also review the position of what is still called the avantgarde. The question we must ask is to what extent this avantgarde, with its inherited myth of progress and its urge to conquer new territory, its actually diametrically opposed to the hybridizations and repetitions if a culture of difference and where there is a possibility for alliances on the basis of a joint oppositionality, an irreducible otherness?”
—Christine Frisinghelli (original booklet translation)

Under Christine Frisinghelli, its first female artistic director, steirischer herbst ’96 went on a search for a “culture of difference” with the theme Remix. Using various forms of postcolonial art, Frisinghelli intended to deliberately challenge the “Western/European concept of art with respect to its complicity with other neocolonial interests” (program booklet). The festival opened with a one-week dancehall event, All Fruits Ripe Soundbash (concept and idea: Hartmut Skerbisch and Michael Schuster), at the Thalia theater, and on the day after the official opening, with the exhibition Inklusion : Exklusion—Kunst im Zeitalter von Postkolonialismus und globaler Migration (Inclusion : Exclusion—Art in the Age of Postcolonialism and Global Migration; curator: Peter Weibel), which took place in parallel at the Künstlerhaus Graz and on the Reininghaus site, which had been newly established for the festival. With artists such as Rasheed Araeen and Olu Oguibe, the project was trailblazing for subsequent large, “global” exhibitions such as documenta 11 and 14.

The film festival Ici et ailleurs / Hier und anderswo (Here and Elsewhere) at the KIZ—Kino im Augarten was dedicated to the consequences of globalization since 1989: migration, diaspora, and exile. Homi K. Bhabha, Catherine David, Chantal Mouffe, Slavoj Žižek, and others spoke at the symposium Postkolonialismus und globale Migration (Postcolonialism and Global Migration) at the Palais Attems. Commissioned works included Wolfgang Bauer’s theater piece Die Menschenfabrik (The Human Factory), which was premiered at the Schauspielhaus under the direction of Thomas Thieme, and Mayako Kubo’s opera Rashomon at the Opernhaus.

Elfriede Jelinek: Echos und Masken (Elfriede Jelinke: Echoes and Masks) was the title of a symposium and exhibition at the Kulturhaus, while Allan Sekula’s project Fish Story—and thus his work as an artist and theorist as a whole—formed the starting point of the Symposium for Photography XVI, Fotografie zwischen Diskurs und Dokument (Photography between Discourse and Document). musikprotokoll ’96 examined fashion and dance under the keyword camouflage.

Frisinghelli took over the herbst Bar, which had been established in 1995 and moved to the Forum Stadtpark in 1996, from her predecessor. It also included the research project Platz des Himmlischen Friedens (Square of Heavenly Peace) on its impending transformation. The artist’s poster for steirischer herbst ’96 was designed by Jörg Schlick.

Program