2004

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“Crisis, then, is a productive mission for steirischer herbst. For one thing because it happens as a process that often eludes planning and rational control. Crisis is unpredictable, full of tension, and elementary importance above all with regard to advanced new artistic production. Crisis is anticyclical, but also a chronic condition. Crisis is a consciousness, a reflection on difficulties, and—to paraphrase Hegel—also requires a specific consciousness.
To avoid misunderstandings right from the start, if steirischer herbst is presenting crisis as the motto of its 2004 programme, this by no means implies that the festival is in a state of crisis. Rather, it is constantly confronted with critical scenarios. The explorative festival focuses on positions in art that consciously reflects on social change and its crisis.
It deals more intimately, the, with projects that set out to form a phalanx of aesthetic and political crises in the form of premières and first-time presentations.”
“Today, crisis is more than and different to choice and decision (which is difficult not only in elections). As always in advanced art production, crisis is a productive and indispensable category. For the key questions concerning the future of society arise in our awareness of crisis.”
—Peter Oswald (original booklet translation)

The title of the steirischer herbst of 2004 was ... Krise ist immer ... (Crisis Is a Constant), although Peter Oswald emphasized in the foreword to the program booklet that what this intended to signify was not that the festival was in a crisis, but rather that it continued to investigate crisis scenarios. “As a festival that explores the present time, it examines positions that reflect the changes in society and its crises.”

The Graz Theater im Bahnhof staged Wolfgang Bauer’s Foyer, a work in which a seventy-year-old comes to the premiere of his play at the Helmut List Halle and becomes entangled in a theatrical maelstrom of riotously turbulent incidents. Other premieres were ... ce qui arrive ... (... What Happens ...) by Olga Neuwirth, after a story by Paul Auster, and junk space by Kathrin Röggla, which deals with fears and coming to terms with them.

At the Forum Stadtpark, Oliver Ressler curated an exhibition with a lecture and roundtable discussion on the topic of economics, with the suggestive subtitle: There Must Be an Alternative. The photo exhibition Bleiben oder Gehen (Stay or Go) at Camera Austria was dedicated to the topic of migration (curators: Christine Frisinghelli and Sandra Križić Roban), and the Neue Galerie presented Peter Weibel—das offene werk 1964–1979 (Peter Weibel—The Open Work, 1964–1979; curators: Günther Holler-Schuster and Peter Peer), which traced the work of the artist and curator as a “pioneer of participatory practices, open processes, and interactivity in his early years” (program booklet).

Moreover, on the occasion of the European Football Championship, there was the extensive project Third Places: Fußball, Video-Games und Musik-Clips in Graz West (Third Places: Soccer, Video Games, and Music Clips in Graz West), and the exhibition Bewegliche Teile—Formen des Kinetischen (Moving Parts—Forms of the Kinetic), in collaboration with the Museum Tinguely, Basel, at the Kunsthaus Graz. The opening was held at the Helmut List Halle, with Doron Rabinovici as speaker, a reading performance by Christian Uetz, a concert by HerrGross & das MutterOrchester, and a film screening with live soundtracks by Cameron Jamie and Keiji Haino.

Program