Volksfronten, the core program of this year s festival, is the first edition curated. The Sound of Music. Press Release,

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1 Press Release, steirischer herbst releases full program for its 2018 edition / Sales of Festival Pass have started and Press and Professional Accreditation is now open steirischer herbst 18 Various locations, Graz Opening Days: steirischer herbst Europe s oldest interdisciplinary festival of contemporary art opens its 51 st edition to the public on 20 September It will be on view through 14 October. Today the full program is online at Sales of the new Festival Pass and accreditation for press and media, as well as professionals, is now also open online. Volksfronten, the core program of this year s festival, is the first edition curated by Ekaterina Degot with a curatorial collective. It includes installative, performative, as well as discursive projects by over 40 artists, many of them newly commissioned by steirischer herbst, and is conceived as a single parcours spread out over the city of Graz. Almost all works are newly commissioned, and are being produced especially for this year s edition. Program For the festival s opening on 20 September 2018, legendary performing arts group Bread & Puppet Theater invites you to a parade through the city with a newly-commissioned performance, addressing issues of the city s urban topography and contemporary politics with local participants. Afterwards, performer and video artist Roman Osminkin will loosely adapt Dmitri Aleksandrovich Prigov s 1990 Coup. A Play for Two Loudspeakers for his newly commissioned, open-air performance taking place on Graz s Schloßbergstiege. The opening night ends with a specially commissioned musical performance taking place on the Kasemattenbühne on top of the Schloßberg by the legendary Slovenian group Laibach, who will present their very own take on The Sound of Music.

2 Meanwhile, the festival s accustomed opening venue, the Helmut List Halle, becomes the site of an exhibition, where Moscow-born artist Irina Korina is building an inflatable landscape lasting ten days. The other works of the Volksfronten program are spread throughout the whole city, some in historic locations: At Forum Stadtpark, for example, Milica Tomić installs her research project dealing with a former labor camp in Aflenz, a town in southern Styria; at Haus der Architektur, Henrike Naumann stages the annexation of Austria in 1990, at least in terms of the furnishings. Funda Gül Özcan develops her work for the former Ankara Türkü Bar in Graz s Griesgasse, Tony Chakar and Nadim Mishlawi move into Hotel Daniel, and the Department of Ultimology researches at Grazer Kunstverein. At Volkshaus Graz the artist duo Igor & Ivan Buharov from Budapest are installing an anarchistic laboratory where they are planning an upcoming revolution, and Kulturzentrum bei den Minoriten is showing works by Ines Doujak, Ekaterina Muromtseva, Martin Behr & Martin Osterider, Victoria Lomasko and Christoph Szalay. The duo kozek hörlonski are also presenting their latest film collaboration with Alexander Martinz here: Demonic Screens II Arrival, a Heimat/horror movie that they are shooting in Graz and Styria this summer. The Volksfronten program also embraces public space: the Vienna-based Japanese artist Yoshinori Niwa launches a public campaign offering to dispose of unwanted or compromising memorabilia from the fascist and Nazi era. In Graz s main square he is installing a container in which visitors can hand in such relics. Works by Rossella Biscotti & Kevin van Braak, Michael Zinganel & Michael Hieslmair, and the ZIP group also feature in public places around Graz; for the first time in Austria, the artist-activist Lars Cuzner is presenting the Intelligence Party that he founded. Performance projects on the festival will include The Iran Conference, a play by the writer and director Ivan Vyrypaev, works commissioned by steirischer herbst from choreographer Michiel Vandevelde or artist Nicoline van Harskamp, new pieces by Roee Rosen, Theater im Bahnhof, and Michael Portnoy. Another production is the commissioned work by composer Christian von Borries, who is developing a collage of the New Year s Concert for the festival based on algorithmic sampling and rearrangement. Ideas is the title of the festival s discursive program that kicks off at the symposium Our Little Fascisms, with participants including Lars Cuzner, Tobias Ginsburg, Ishay Landa, Ewa Majewska, G. M. Tamás, Oxana Timofeeva, Renata Salecl, Tiago

3 Saraiva, and others, along with performative contributions by Oliver Zahn/HAUPTAKTION, and Mazzaj & Ausländerbehörde. The full program of the opening days as well as the festival can be found at In addition to the core program Volksfronten, the Collateral Program, constituted of various exhibitions and events by many cultural institutions in Graz, as well as musikprotokoll, a festival platform dedicated to contemporary and experimental music conceived and organized by ORF Radio Österreich 1 and Radio Steiermark, complete this year s edition of steirischer herbst. herbstbar Since the 1990s, herbstbar has been a crucial and legendary component of steirischer herbst. Whereas in recent years, the herbstbar was transformed into a festival center, starting with 2018 steirischer herbst wants to focus specifically and consciously on returning to the classic herbstbar to bring the bar part of its name to the fore, creating a place where the audience is invited to come together with the artists, the team, and the makers behind steirischer herbst, where feedback and inspiration can take place directly. This year, the herbstbar features musical playlists by Volksfronten artists, who express their understanding of the theme through music. For the full program including discussions taking place in the herbstbar, please visit Guidebook There is no one single right way to explore this story, but it is preferable to see projects several at a time; not isolated from each other, but in a dialogue, sometimes even in conflict. The annotations in this Guidebook offer running curatorial commentary on the connections one might draw, and suggest some paths through the exhibition and along the festival. A copy of this Guidebook is free with the purchase of a steirischer herbst 18 Festival Pass. It can be purchased separately for 5 Euro. Festival Pass Together all programs build a larger, grander narrative, each of its parts interconnected both on the physical map of Graz and on the calendar of the festival. For this reason, this year for the first time steirischer herbst is introducing a Festival Pass that gives admission to all events and exhibitions of the Volksfronten program and hence allows multiple and repeated visits, making the festival more accessible to everyone, and not least enabling you to

4 engage with the program in greater depth. The Festival Pass also offers reduced admission to musikprotokoll events and the collateral program of steirischer herbst. The Festival Pass can be purchased as of today at and later at the Vistor and Press Center of steirischer herbst which opens 13 September, as well as all oeticket outlets. Because the capacity of some venues of performative projects is limited, we advise you to reserve a seat. You can do so for a reservation fee of 2 Euro per seat at or at the Visitor and Press Center as long as tickets are available. Reservations are only valid in conjunction with your Festival Pass. For Volksfronten performative productions, single tickets are available. Note that for the Laibach performance on 20.9., no single tickets are available (admission only with a Festival Pass). For installative venues of Volksfronten, no single tickets are available. Festival Pass Prices /23 Euro /15 Euro Single tickets for performances 15/11 Euro Accreditation Press and Professional Accreditation is also open as of today. Besides members of the press reporting on the festival, we also invite professionals active in the field of the arts to apply for accreditation for the opening days at Please note that for press and professionals admission to the opening day events is only possible with valid accreditation. steirischer herbst reserves the right to decide upon accreditations after reviewing the required application. Press images as well as further information can be found in the press section at

5 We would be pleased if you could announce these events and like to extend a warm invitation to visit us. Should you have any questions or need additional information please do not hesitate to contact us. Kind regards, Heide Oberegger Press Officer Arash Shahali Coordinator International Media and Professional Visitors Bernd Buchmasser Press and Social Media Assistant About steirischer herbst Every autumn since its founding 1968, half a century ago, the festival has provided a platform for new productions, provoking and shaping public debates in a variety of forms across disciplines and media. Reinventing itself many times over, steirischer herbst has always redefined the terms of the conversation about what culture might mean in a changing contemporaneity, as seen in Graz, Austria s second most populous city. In 2018, the festival continues in the collaborative spirit of its founding and stays true to its focus on international breadth and local depth. It seeks to foster longterm engagement and the production of new work based on in-depth research and emphasizes urban and regional narratives in their sometimes bizarre relation to global processes. The title of the 51 st edition of the festival is Volksfronten consciously used in the somewhat unconventional plural form references very different historical contexts the antifascist coalitions of the 1930s, an ultra-rightwing nationalist group in the US, the ironic name given to representative facades in the GDR thus addressing the heated ideological battles and collapsing political dichotomies of the present.