Opening steirischer herbst ’24
With opening speech by Director Ekaterina Degot
This year, steirischer herbst sets off in an inner court called Lesliehof. The building was erected for the Benedictine monastery of St. Lambrecht in Upper Styria and was later owned by Count Leslie. It is a place where two dominant powers of the last thousand (or more) years shook hands. Striving to defend and wall in the status quo, the church and the aristocracy were mutually beneficial partners in this and many other respects. Creating a unified nation, a fatherland called Austria, was crucial to their goals.
We aim to deconstruct this narrative of the fatherland in this year’s festival. Not out of a rash appetite for destruction, but rather to decipher the horror that can emanate from this patriarchal idea of the homeland and put it in a place where it can become minute, fickle, and laughable. Using humor and poetic wit, we'd like to engage in an easygoing albeit serious discussion with you about the fatherland and make this uncanny homeland more homely again.
Following the opening speech by director and chief curator Ekaterina Degot, Natalia Pschenitschnikova's cheeky performance shows how this can be done by dissecting and reassembling the enigmatic Habsburg letters “A.E.I.O.U.”
19.9., 17:00
Lesliehof (entry via Joanneumsviertel)
8010 Graz
Free admission
