festivaldistrikt

Gates hold the square together, illuminating and yet distinctly dividing. Outside, you are excluded – and inside, enclosed. The festival district is inviting and uninviting in equal measure, a gated community with big portals, homey and uncanny. A neighbourhood that fends off the outside. We are who we are, guests are more than welcome, but within limits. We form a closed community, perhaps a bit too enclosed.

This time around, steirischer herbst has settled at the heart of gentrified Graz, where for four weeks it will be a cosmopolitan little town within the city – with a tendency for bigger things. Extremely inviting: oversized illuminated writing on the houses, elongated table runners on the street, its own pub and eateries all around, a club, a cinema, a hotel, a shop, a bar and restaurants. From tourist office to nightmare therapy, from experimental electronics to exhibition, from party to theory, it offers everything, we are self-sufficient.

With her concept for this year’s festival district spread out along Mariahilferstraße, the Austrian-Slovenian artist Maruša Sagadin plays with the idea of different worlds in one city, with the possibilities of dissociation and invitation, with the discrepancy between village and wannabe cosmopolitan city, between inside and outside, open to the world and bigoted. For after all, it also goes for steirischer herbst, if you’re not in, you’re not in.