What does the public want?

 

 

Have you been to Graz for the steirische Herbst in 2012 which went under the theme of "truth is concrete"?

For me it was the most horrible cultural experience I had in the past years. The organizers wanted to squeeze as much as anyway possible out of the participants by establishing a 24/7 round the clock event program in an almost criminally inhuman manner. I remember Anna Jermolaewa's fresh movie about the social upheaval in Moscow having its screening around midnight.

 

At two o clock in the morning a panel discussion started with Occupy wallstreet and → voina / Pussy Riot activists among others. The translator was heavily over-worked and translated some sleepy made up words. The discussion was actually not a discussion. It was a show by people who presented themselves with attitudes that you expect from kindergarden age kids. Some participants opened a bottle of booze on the stage of the theatre, others wanted to dance instead of the scheduled discussion, others intervened with dada-style rudeness. At three o clock in the morning in the middle of a highly childish fight over what is to be done translator left her post angrily after having stuttered words for an hour. The desaster stemmed from the round the clock output maximization. If Pussy Riot and Occupy wallstreet would have discussed at 6 in the evening it would have been something different.

I was reminded of this when Sarah Untner gave her guided disctrict tour lecture and Andrea had to translate. Sarah repeated a few times that she had not expected so many people to turn up for the tour and her euphemist PR-talk sounded accordingly. Every time I asked a question I would fail to get an answer.

 

 

 

Andrea for her part had the difficult task of translating the rubbish information. Now I know that Andrea's contract says she is supposed to work 25 hours a week while she actually works 250 hours. "Wait!" you will say, "A week does not even have so many hours!" but Andrea does several things at once splitting her skills dozentasking round the clock. Being deprived of sleep, food and breathing her translation of Sarah's nonsensical tour guide information was yet less nonsensical because she filled in the missing information and the open questions with routine tourist-hypnosis.

 

So it was nice to walk through the Salzburg district of Lehen in the sunshine. But categories of private / public space were utterly neglected.

 

The concept of → Commons or the very current transformations described in David Harvey's → book were not touched at the tour and the students from Anders Kreuger's curatorial course decided to leave the tour shortly after the middle. We missed the lecture of the human geographer →Felix Wiegand afterwards, but someone filmed it and it will be made accessible on the web.

 

The artist Ylva Frick from Sweden and living in Iceland attended the city walk and also missed out the lecture just like me. Here is one of her works:

 

 

We continue to dwell on the question what the public wants here very soon...