Tuesdays and Wednesdays are hearing days – a series in which we will develop the rules for the festival of the future together. Who takes decisions? Where does project funding come from and where does it go? Who is invited and who isn’t –and why? Who is the producer, who is the audience? Boycotts – yes or no? And: how does a globally active festival agree with sustainability? Experts, artists and activists provide an insight into their practices and examine potential alternatives. Over the duration of five weeks, the Council of the Republic will attend and discuss the hearings and design the Festwochen’s own constitution, which will be presented to the audience at the end of the festival as the Vienna Declaration.
EN … It’s time to shake up familiar structures so that we can shape our own future together.
Helen Radermacher, student | Council of the Republic
21 / 22 / 28 / 29 May, 4 / 5 / 11 / 12 / 18 / 19 June, 6 pm
House of the Republic / Volkskundemuseum Wien
oroduced and executed by the team of the Wiener Festwochen | Freie Republik Wien
The first two hearings in the Free Republic of Vienna will take on the fundamentals: How are decisions taken? How are work structures and curation processes organised? Addressing a range of best practice models (quotas for gender, age, continent, etc.), questions are raised. How much grassroots democracy, how much control, how much regulation is needed? What counts:
the majority opinion or rather individual expertise? And: how is it possible to design a transparent and accessible interior structure for the Republic?
Head of Committee Elisabeth Großschädl, Fariba MoslehDay 1 – Tuesday May 21
CURATION
The Wiener Festwochen is one of the world’s most outstanding multidisciplinary festivals, presenting national and international productions of the highest artistic standard in Vienna for five to six weeks every year. Many artists who do not usually present their works in our city show their latest projects here. But who is invited here and who is not? Which stories are told? Which ones are not? Which ones remain unheard?
Dear Viennese of the Council of the Free Republic of Vienna: Have you ever been to a Wiener Festwochen event? Do artists and works from regions that arouse your interest also come to the Wiener Festwochen?
Have you ever seen a play in which your first language was spoken? Did what you saw include the realities of your life, pick you up, inspire you? Did you understand what it was about? Vienna’s cultural scene continues to reproduce many exclusions – and the Wiener Festwochen
does not guarantee participation for the entire population, despite its cultural policy mission. People with disadvantaged educational biographies, economically disadvantaged people and people affected by discrimination are particularly underrepresented in the arts and culture sector.
In order to reflect social realities and work towards social justice as one of the largest art festivals in Europe, the Wiener Festwochen needs a structural realignment in the areas of staff, programme and audience as well as new collaborations. With the Council of the Free Republic of Vienna, an established ‘high’ culture festival wants to set off into the future and open up the festival to the entire city. This requires new, diverse perspectives in terms of staff, which in turn will enable new perspectives in the programme and thus reach new visitors.
On that note, we advocate breaking up the canon of the past in favour of an artistic polyphony of the future.
Day 2 – Wednesday May 22
QUOTA
For decades, experts and artists have been pointing out and criticising privileges, grievances and inequalities in relation to the lack of access of many population groups to art and cultural life, as well as the associated mechanisms of exclusion. Although there have long been a large number of national and international model projects and expertises, the opening processes of the Vienna Festival have so far remained limited to individual productions, superficial diversity initiatives and ultimately at the level of symbolic commitment.
The festival organisation still does not do justice to the universal human right under Article 27 that all people have the right to ‘participate freely in the cultural life of the community’. With the Council of the Free Republic of Vienna, an outstanding international arts festival wants to set off into the future and drive structural and content-related changes as a learning institution. This requires a clear reorientation at all levels of production – programme, staff and audience.
The current staff structure of the Wiener Festwochen is rather homogeneous and orientated towards the Austrian majority population, which does not do justice to our pluralistic society. Looking inwards, into the organisation itself, is the basis of forward-looking programming.
In order for a forward-looking festival to take responsibility and address current social challenges, privileges must not only be addressed, but also shifted.
By beginning to represent our pluralistic society, the Wiener Festwochen can be a festival that is relevant to this society.
Elisabeth Großschädl is co-publisher of period. magazine.
Ivana Pilić works as a cultural worker, curator and diversity consultant.
Iketina Danso (she/her) is a human resources manager specialising in human rights and equality. She currently heads the Office for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at the University of Applied Arts Vienna and is a Senior Lecturer for AntiDiscrimination and Equality in the Master’s programme in Applied Human Rights.
Laura Camacho from Colombia, who heads the international programme of the Oslo World Festival.
Necîbe Qeredaxî and Sarah Marcha come from the Jineolojî Center in Brussels, a research centre for the science of women’s (revolution) developed in the autonomous region of Rojava.
Prof. Dr Maria do Mar Castro Varela is a professor of General Education and Social Work at the Alice Salomon University of Applied Sciences Berlin.
Fariba Mosleh is a curator and cultural manager specialising in transcultural and anti-discriminatory artistic practices with a focus on performative and visual arts. She works in the curatorial team of Brunnenpassage Vienna and is a freelance inter/ national artist.
Alev Korun is a politician and teaches at a Viennese secondary school.
Cornelia Scheuer is a performer and actress in the independent scene and co-founded the performance group Bilderwerfer in 1994.
Bettina Masuch is a German dramatist and theatre theatre director and artistic director at the St. Pölten Festival Theatre.
Sarah Ostertag is an Austrian theatre director and theatre maker
Marita Haas speaks and writes about gender equality, inequalities in the world of work and how we can can eliminate them.
Susanne Hochreiter is a literary scholar at the at the Institute for German Studies at the University of Vienna.
PUBLICATION DETAILS Owner, Editor and Publisher Wiener Festwochen GesmbH, Lehárgasse 11/1/6, 1060 Wien P + 43 1 589 22 0, festwochen@festwochen.at | www.festwochen.at General Management Milo Rau, Artemis Vakianis Artistic Direction (responsible for content) Milo Rau (Artistic Director) Text credits Contribution by committee chairwomen Fariba Mosleh and Elisabeth Großschädl Produced by Print Alliance HAV Produktions GmbH (Bad Vöslau)
The cover illustration was designed by the multidisciplinary Ukrainian artist Alevtina Kakhidze, whose work critically examines socio-political changes and topics such as consumer behaviour, ecology, feminism and life in conflict zones.
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