CULTURAL DIALOGUE WITH HUNGARY

AUSTRIA’S CULTURAL INSTITUTION IN THE HUNGARIAN CAPITAL BUILDS ON CLOSE COOPERATION WITH LOCAL PARTNERS

The Austrian Cultural Forum Budapest (Österreichisches Kulturforum Budapest – ÖKF), one of 30 Cultural Forums worldwide by Austria's Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs, looks back at a history of 45 years. The Director of the institute, Christian Autengruber tells Diplomacy&Trade about the tasks they performed and the services they provide in Hungary.

Regarding the scope of the Cultural Forum’s activities in the Hungarian capital, Christian Autengruber highlights that “in our team of seven, we organize programs in all art forms, film, literature, visual arts, conferences, lectures, dance, theater and performance art but our tasks also include cooperation in the fields of education and science. However, our focal points differ from year to year: for 2023, we are working on a strong cooperation with the European Capital of Culture Veszprém/ Balaton. This European project is also important to us because we are particularly interested in enlarging our activities beyond Budapest.”

Emphasis on contemporary music

The ÖKF organizes a long list of events from literature through cinema to classical music concerts. As to which ones he would point out as the most popular, he says he considers their cooperation in the field of music to be particularly successful. “We work with a number of Hungarian music institutions, such as the Budapest Music Center, the Musicology Institute at Budapest Castle, the A38 ship and most recently with the House of Music Hungary in Városliget [City Park]. With all these partner institutions, we are constantly working on programs, whereby we place a great deal of emphasis on contemporary music-making, including the examination of Hungarian musical heritage when we have Austrian musicians as guests. At the moment, we are very much looking forward to the 100th anniversary of the birth of the Hungarian-Austrian composer of contemporary classical music, György Ligeti in 2023, who spent the last years of his life in Vienna.”

Dialogue with Hungary

The Austrian Cultural Forum Budapest is working in close partnership with Hungarian artists and with Hungarian cultural institutions. Speaking about the considerations when entering into such partnerships, the Director stresses that “partnerships are more or less the heart of our work. All our projects are about dialogue with Hungary. Our target group is the Hungarian society and we always work with artistic means in dialogue. On the one hand, this is reflected in the partnerships with Hungarian institutions with which we develop our program. On the other hand, Austria and Hungary have a lot in common historically, which we build on in our work. In September 2022, for example, we had a very special cooperation with the Hungarian National Film Archive for the first time, where we paid tribute to filmmaking between Budapest, Vienna and later Hollywood as part of the "Budapest Classics Film Marathon". It is little known that Budapest and Vienna were film metropolises until National Socialism, and that there was a lively exchange of actors, directors, film music composers, film technicians and many more between them.”

Common history

As Christian Autengruber already mentioned, Austria has had a long period of common history with Hungary. As to how that appears in the activities of the ÖKF, he states that basically, Austrian foreign cultural diplomacy focuses on contemporary cultural creation. “Here in Hungary, we have a little different situation, because we must also strive for the close historical connections. As an example, I am thinking of the close cooperation of the state archives, which still brings to light unknown treasures – recently, for example, on minutes of the Council of Ministers from the time of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, in which the political processes between the Hungarian and the so-called Cisleithanian halves of the empire to negotiate the ‘Ausgleich’ [Equalization] become clear.”

Libraries

Four “Österreich-Bibliotheken” (Austrian Libraries) in Hungary, with the exception of the one at Andrássy University Budapest, celebrate their 30th anniversary in 2022 and 2023. As the ÖKF Director explains, they are all integrated into university libraries and have a wide variety of book holdings related to Austria and German-language literature, which are also constantly being expanded. “We are currently organizing literary encounters in these libraries together with the seven Austrian lecturers at Hungarian universities in the runup to the Austria focus at the Leipzig Book Fair 2023. They are, therefore, not only places where literary works from Austria – or related to Austria – can be borrowed throughout the country, but also venues for literary events. Furthermore, German as a foreign language is a great priority for us together with many actors, like the German and Swiss Embassies, the Goethe Institute and the Austrian Institute as part of the Cultural Forum being responsible for teaching German with an Austrian touch.”

Topical issues

ÖKF Budapest is not only about showcasing Austria's culture but getting into dialogue on topics that people face all together in Europe or worldwide. “One of our latest programs is called ‘Fixing the Future’, where we try to deal with social and ecological challenges of our time – always in connection with people from Hungarian and Austrian civil society. We mainly link protagonists, for example, between NGOs on urban development in Budapest and Vienna, on issues of the ecology of the Danube, etc. Women issues are also core to our work, as well as all aspects of pluralistic and democratic societies,” Christian Autengruber points out. As regards the composition of the audience attending the events of the Austrian Cultural Forum Budapest and the feedback the institution receives from them, “our Hungarian visitors are as diverse as our program. The pandemic has meant big cuts for our work, but we are happy that after many online programs, our in-person events are now always well attended again,” the ÖKF Director concludes.