Welcome to Salzburg

 

 

My father´s family name being Tagwerker, and my given name Lukas, I now call myself blogger in residence, or blir if you will. Until the end of August 2014 I will write for you every day from Salzburg.

 

How did I get this job?

Thanks to my former flatmate Irene who had forwarded the email announcing this job I met the director of the Summer Academy Hildegund Amanshauser for an interview. She openly adressed her fear of me mocking the Academy with cynicism. I spoke of two kinds of cynicism, the first being cold, bitter and resigned of the world; the second hot and sweet, amplifying contradictions up to a melting point of reconciliation. I promised not to engage in the first kind but that I would apply the latter.

 

Now, very recently I had a conversation with a refrigeration engineer. He told me that cold does not exist. If that is true then my thermodynamic metaphor for distinguishing mental attitudes is flawed. My theory of hot and cold cynicism worked well as intellectual imposture. It helped me become blir. But how to go on with the problem of cynicism? The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who don't have it, somebody said. If the temperature of my moody writing goes against your thermal needs, I ask you to comment. That shall be our remedy.

 

I will practice accurate observation without damaging my →brain. 

 

In the train from Vienna to Salzburg I read Hofmannsthal´s play →Everyman, a crying baby distracting my attention. When I was about to get back into the text´s rythmic rhymes the baby´s mother would unplug her shiny nipple from the baby´s mouth and the greedy little kid - older than one year - started to cry again. So I read Everyman with interruptions. When the child was drinking its mother´s milk I was with Everyman and his struggle with death. When the mother unplugged I had to unplug from the drama. I found the play very silly. If you haven´t noticed by now that you are mortal Everyman will teach you a lesson though: you are mortal. The idea that only work and belief give relief in the hour of death make the play a pseudoprotestant meditation. In the end Everyman´s works are too weak to save him, so he is solely saved by his belief: pure roman catholic salvation ideology, welcome to Salzburg! I brought luggage for the coming six weeks and if I had planned the place in front of the railway station I would not have hidden the taxi stand behind the luggage deposit containers.

 

I come 15 minutes late to the dinner party. At the entrance I look up and see all these teaching artists through the glass floor of the terrace.

 

 

The athmosphere at the gathering is between overexcited and underrelaxed or is it the other way round? Some kind of tension is in the air. All of the artists have days filled with multiple tasks ahead of them. All but one: Raimund Stadlmair prepared everything for the summer academy and will soon go for holidays. Being the only really relaxed artist at the dinner he speaks of → Ikaria, a greek prison island where 13.000 communists were incarcerated during the greek civil war, among them → Mikis Theodorakis. Raimund visited the island some years ago, then he got involved with the Summer Academy, then the financial scandal rocked Salzburg, then the budget of the Summer Academy was reduced so that this year there is no teaching activity in Hallein, which gives Raimund the chance to spend the summer on the former prison island.

 

 

Raimund´s dinner is steaming from the plate while he summarizes Salzburg´s history for me. Napoleon secularized Salzburg in 1803, Mozart never was an Austrian. While Raimund talks about his PhD thesis in history his dish, the delicious fish cools down. Raimund researched Austria´s printmaker´s unionizing between 1847 and 1914, the printmakers being the first to build a union. The fish is finished, a curd cheese dessert is served.

A group of artists stays longer and wants to go to a pub called →Andreas Hofer. We go there and find it already closed. At a kiosk next to the river Salzach Raimund invites all of us for some beer and two tiny little mice flit around on the pavement adding to our entertainment.

Guess whom I met the next morning?

 

"When the students arrive everything has to be clean!" Raimund says wiping the window.

 

And here they arrive, 114 learning artists, some facing their mortality with their work, others with their belief, all go through registration. There is a hustle at the office of the Summer Academy: a phone call for the milk, another one to find out when the New York Times is coming, Kalim from Moskow wants to change 100$ into € currency and Kathi rushes to collect lunch orders for the next day.

 

I want to see the Galerie 5020, where Robert Kuśmirowski´s public art course takes place. After searching for it I realize that I better should have written down the adress. I thought I would remember the spot on the map in the city centre so I turn and turn again in between the same narrow alleys until I bump into Prateek, his name means symbol or sign and he is hungry. The first time I met him was an hour ago at the Summer Academy when Prateek was thirsty and I ensured him of the tap waters drinkability. We get to know each other a bit eating and walking through the city. Prateek says it can happen that the more you try to be yourself the more you move away from yourself and that he is amazed by his room´s window handles that not only open and close but can also tipp the window. When we return to the Summer Academy inside the Castle of Salzburg Pakreet is reminded of the Portughese built fortress on the prison island of →Diu in India. Another prison island talk. I tell Raimund with whom I had the first prison island talk about my second prison island talk and he compares the location of the Salzburg Summer Academy itself with a prison island.

Welcome to this island! And feel free to stay!