2007

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“‘Close enough’—describes a dynamic state, a moment in time: Being close enough —that is yearning, movement towards and away from each other. In love, in all relationships: Never close enough and that again too close. In geopolitics: Europe that is growing closer together, Africa that is drawing closer, the economic closeness of the globalised world. And in art: Art touches us when it repels or holds us, but also when it throws us back on ourselves, on a moment, a memory, a repressed occurrence perhaps. A fleeting sense of closeness. Or, on the other hand, abstract realization, a premonition of clarity, sudden comprehension.
This too much and too little, this never being right, this paradox that is at the same time the driving force of interpersonal, political, artistic and performative force and motivation, is the leitmotif of steirischer herbst, the central thread that runs through the festival without wanting to be ostentatious.”
—Veronica Kaup-Hasler (original booklet translation)

Close Enough, the leitmotif of the fortieth edition of steirischer herbst, strove to reflect a paradox that is familiar in love and in all relationships: “Never close enough and then again too close. In geopolitics: Europe that is growing closer together, Africa that is drawing closer, the economic closeness of the globalized world. And in art: art touches us when it repels and captivates us, but also when it reflects on us” (program booklet). Moments containing too much or too little—a paradox that is simultaneously a driving force—ran like a thread through steirischer herbst ’07.

The festival began with Closed Enough by Staalplaat Soundsystem, a work commissioned by steirischer herbst and musikprotokoll, which made use of the Helmut List Halle as an instrument, contrary to its intended character as an “almost perfect white cube for music,” largely free of intrinsic noise. It was followed by the opening party with Electric Songs by Kmet. The focal point of the festival was The Theatre on Karmeliterplatz, conceived by the Swedish collective International Festival in cooperation with a team of forty individuals, including artists, architects, and theorists from eleven European countries, as a place for encounters, both a theater and a theater performance. Besides Bilder des Festivals (Images of the Festival), a “documentation on the run” by the media artist Tim Ringewaldt, and various other events such as the German premieres of No Dice by the Nature Theater of Oklahoma and Orthographe de la physionomie en mouvement by the Italian artist group Orthographe also took place there.

In the youth theater Next Liberty, Tim Etchells of Forced Entertainment (in cooperation with the Belgian production platform Victoria) presented That Night Follows Day, his first play with children, while Black Market for Useful Knowledge and Not-knowing No. 8, “an installation with 100 experts” by Hannah Hurtzig and the Mobile Akademie was shown at Orpheum. At the Stadtmuseum Graz, Reinhard Braun curated Reading Back and Forth, an exhibition on forty years of steirischer herbst (with artists such as Maria Eichhorn, Annika Eriksson, and plan b).

Program