Festival director Milo Rau live studio; afterwards: “Interplays: Ganes in St. Corona” – on May 13th on ORF 2
Vienna (OTS) – The “kulturMontag” presented by Clarissa Stadler on May 13, 2024 at 10:30 p.m. on ORF 2 is dedicated, among other things, to the upcoming Vienna Festival Weeks, which are already causing controversy in advance because of their political orientation. Neo-Intendant Milo Rau is a live guest in the studio. The next edition of the dialect series #sogamoi is also on the program, which looks at Vorarlberg, and the program also honors writer Karl-Markus Gauß with a portrait on his 70th birthday.
Following the magazine, ORF 2 will show a new edition of the concert talk format “Wechselspiele in St. Corona” (11:25 p.m.). This time Teresa Vogl’s guests: the South Tyrolean group Ganes.
Revolution and resistance – Milo Rau’s first Vienna Festival weeks
“We owe the world a revolution.” Neo-Intendant Milo Rau uses this motto for his first edition of the Vienna Festival Weeks, which are already on everyone’s lips even before the opening and trigger heated debates – most recently with the “Speech to Europe” by the German-Israeli philosopher Omri Boehm, who is responsible for this faces accusations of anti-Semitism. The speech stimulated reflection, independent thinking and dialogue, entirely in the spirit of Intendant Rau – a political person through and through, as his international work to date shows. In Vienna too, the Swiss wants to create a multi-voiced, passionate, combative and controversial world theater and is taking unusual paths in doing so. “What can self-empowerment of civil society look like?” is one of the central questions that Rau wants to pursue during the festival and has therefore declared the Vienna Festival Weeks a Free Republic. The “Vienna Trials” are intended to involve real judges and lawyers negotiating important social issues. For example, the role of the media during the corona pandemic. In doing so, Rau wants to open up a space for discourse and hold politics, the media, activists and the art scene accountable. The members of the Council of the Republic such as Sandra Hülser, Annie Ernaux, Kirill Serebrennikov, Carola Rackete, Jean Ziegler, Elfriede Jelinek and a diverse group of 70 Viennese form the center of the Free Republic. After intensive debates, at the end of the festival they recorded their will as sovereigns in the Vienna Declaration and thus played a decisive role in shaping the future of the festival weeks.
Big names from the international theater scene meet radical performance artists on stage. These include the renowned Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov with his project “Barocco” and the Austrian artist Florentina Holzinger with “Sancta”, a musical and performative reflection on female identity and the body in religious systems and rites. Festwochen boss Milo Rau himself takes on Mozart’s last opera “La Clemenza di Tito”. Together with 18 people living in Vienna, some of whom have had their own experiences with repressive systems, he questions the power of political art. “kulturMontag” provides an overview of the productions. Milo Rau talks to Clarissa Stadler live in the studio about the realignment of the Wiener Festwochen, about participation, art and politics, provocation and dialogue.
Linguistic searches for traces in Vorarlberg – New episode of the nine-part #sogamoi series about Austria’s dialects
The westernmost and second smallest federal state in the Alpine republic surprises not only with its innovative companies, sustainable and modern building culture and independent craftsmanship in which innovation and tradition merge. The language of this region, which borders on Germany, Switzerland and Liechtenstein, is also astonishing. Because while the rest of Austria belongs to the Bavarian-Austrian language area, the people of Vorarlberg maintain their Alemannic dialects. These sound similar to Swabian or “Schwyzerdütsch” and are not that easy to understand at first. Although “Vorarlbergerisch” actually doesn’t exist as a language. Every valley, and sometimes every community, has its linguistic peculiarities and colorings – and the many dialects sometimes differ significantly from one another. Due to the Alemannic language affinity, dialect communication between Vorarlbergers and most German-Swiss people is usually possible without any problems, although communication with the rest of Austria is difficult. The Vorarlberg dialect enjoys the dubious reputation within Austria of being completely incomprehensible. “Almost everyone in Austria speaks at least two languages,” says the Vorarlberg writer Michael Köhlmeier, meaning German and the dialect. Both are their own languages for him. The soon-to-be 75-year-old is convinced that dealing with it can teach us not only to recognize differences, but also to understand them as desired, beautiful and healing.
What do the people of Gsiberg, as they are affectionately called, mean by their dialects, how do newcomers deal with them, how do artists like Michael Köhlmeier use High German and dialect and what does everything that the people of Vorarlberg say actually mean? This edition of the new dialect series #sogamoi gets to the bottom of these questions.
On the 70s of a critical observer – homage to Karl-Markus Gauß
The author, essayist, critic and chronicler Karl-Markus Gauß has been exploring the European continent for more than 30 years, often providing sharp-tongued and poetic comments in his texts. He takes a stand for a human world, underlines the various paradoxes and perversions of modern life, but without falling into cultural pessimism. His literary thoughts repeatedly revolve around minorities and ethnic groups, such as Roma or Sephardim, and he is repeatedly drawn to Central and Southeastern Europe. Gauß describes his encounters with intellectuals from these regions as well as with people on the street or in inns. For his 70th birthday, he gave himself and his readers the new book “Ship of Stone – Places and Dreams”. It’s not a travel book, but it still shows the man celebrating his birthday as a traveler. The Salzburg writer finds the eponymous ship-shaped hotel ruins in Albania. They are political notes, daydreams or fantasies. In it, Gauss also openly talks about the two heart attacks that literally left him unbalanced, and about his fear of being struck by lightning on the podium at a literary event or at the table in a restaurant. But neither health crises nor advancing age would have made him a different person. “I certainly wasted a lot in life, but wasting was the best thing about life,” says Karl-Markus Gauß. The “KulturMontag” with a tribute to the 70th birthday.
New edition “Interplays in St. Corona” with Ganes (11:25 p.m.)
The intimate conversation concert format “Wechselspiele in St. Corona” is entering its 15th round. This time a formation from the South Tyrolean Dolomites accepted the ORF’s invitation to St. Corona am Wechsel: the Ganes group. The pop trio has an eventful line-up history – this time two of the three ladies, namely the sisters Elisabeth and Marlene Schuen, are playing with the two musicians Johannes Bär (trumpet, tuba and sousaphone) and Raffael Holzhauser (guitar). They lead the audience into the world of the Dolomite legends that shaped their childhood in La Val in South Tyrol. The band name Ganes also refers to the water mermaids of legend.
In their songs, sung in Ladin, the musicians combine the culture and language of their homeland, which they also carry on in their lyrics, with complex sound carpets – woven from the sound of a few instruments with a lot of voice. In St. Corona, the formation is now presenting classics from their varied repertoire as well as current pieces that will soon be released in the new album entitled “Vives”. In conversation with cultural presenter Teresa Vogl, the four artists provide insight into their world of thoughts surrounding music. Alex Wieser took over the TV direction.