The writers’ collective Nazis & Goldmund calls for a two-day lab in which artists together with initiatives and activists search for different narratives – narratives in favour of a positive understanding of change. We need coalitions. We need the pre-political space. We need language. ‘And it will take a while. We cannot be that tired – it will take a while and it will not work at first and it will take even longer and it will make us tired, maybe also afraid, maybe also confused, maybe we will question everything – so what’.

Unlike in other countries such as France, there is no cross-party alliance against the right in Austria – why should there be? Right-wing to far-right language in political discourse, anti-democratic attitudes, open flirting with Orbanism, homogeneity and remigration as demands in the election manifesto have now been normalised for political discourse in Austria through several participations in the government by a party on the far right. Nazis & Goldmund reads the FPÖ election programme as a prelude to an inter-institutional networking and alliance meeting against the right – with Gerhild Steinbuch (author), Florian Tröbinger (actor) and special guest Dániel Máté Sándor (Hungarian cultural producer).

Programme

Sat, 26 October, 12:00–6:00 pm at studio brut
Nazis & Goldmund
History, networking, alliances

Open lab on alliance politics and experiences with right-wing cultural politics with inputs from DIE VIELEN Österreich, an association of cultural activists in Austria for an open, solidary, diverse and democratic society, D'Arts - Project Office for Diversity; Wieder Donnerstag, Mário Drgoňa, dramaturge at the Slovak National Theatre Bratislava

Nazis & Goldmund invite you to a two-day supra-institutional networking and alliance meeting against the right. The aim is to create a place where the possibility of supra-institutional alliance politics can be discussed and planned for the long term – because, as always in Austria, what politics can’t do, art must do.

Sat, 26 October, 7:00 pm at studio brut
Nazis & Goldmund
Right-wing cultural politics

Panel with Lilla Kizlinger, director and actress (Budapest/Vienna), Mário Drgoňa, dramaturge (Bratislava) & Robert Misik, journalist and non-fiction author (Vienna) in conversation with Matthias Seier (dramaturge, Volkstheater Wien) and Gerhild Steinbuch (author)

Whether it is the installation of a government-affiliated board of trustees to head the SZFE 2020 in Hungary or the dismissal of the general director of Slovakia’s National Theatre in summer 2024: right-wing governments see the cultural sector as a space for discourse that is to be modelled in their favour through new appointments, enacted legislative changes, shortened terms of office or the cancellation of subsidies and realignment in the sense of a so-called ‘homogeneity’ that is hostile to humanity and freedom of expression. How are artists who produce art under right-wing governments inside and outside the institutions dealing with the situation? Which strategies are they developing – and how can they get support? Artists and cultural workers from Slovakia and Hungary in dialogue with artists who live and work in Austria.

Nazis & Goldmund describe themselves as a many headed poetological monster that critically monitors the developments and actions among the European Right and their international alliances, analysing and attacking their narrative strategies and staged interventions.