Gries, the lowest point in Graz, has traditionally been occupied by lower classes and migrants because of its tendency to flood. Our subjective, ideological and intensely internalized world allows evil, in the words of Primo Levi, to ‘radiate outward… surrounding itself with accomplices won over by fear or seduction’. By doing so, it suggests that morality is a highly dynamic, self-perpetuating and polarizing field. This intervention, entitled Submarine Frieda, questions the dynamic between the principles of Peace and Freedom, as peace for some often comes at the price of freedom for others. However, Frieda is a name derived from the German word for freedom, Freiheit. The image depicts a group of workers carrying signage with the word Friede (peace), but later pacifists had altered the word Friede, to Frieda, the name of a woman, in fear of Nazi persecution. Here, a photograph depicting a 1925 demonstration is displayed in an aquarium. This year’s festival, entitled Humans and Demons, questions the ethical boundaries that make up good and evil in a world full of assumptions, addressing questions of survivor justice, political theater and artificial intelligence. Like Kassel, Berlin, and Istanbul, Graz has often considered itself to be situated on the very edge of the West meeting the East, and therefore avant garde. Much of this is owed to its particular position near the tri-national border of Austria, Italy and the former Yugoslavia. It has consistently been one of Europe’s most experimental, historiographic and politically forward art events. The event was established as a celebration of the harvest season, in a region rich with food, wine and history. Xenia Benivolski visits the festival in Graz and selects some of her highlights.įounded in 1968, the steirischer herbst festival has revolutionary inquiry and a critique of modernism built into its DNA. This year’s edition of steirischer herbst, entitled Humans and Demons, questions the ethical boundaries that make up good and evil in a world full of assumptions, addressing questions of survivor justice, political theater and artificial intelligence.
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