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’.

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.
 

In conversation with Matthias Seier (dramaturge, Volkstheater Wien) and Gerhild Steinbuch (author):

• Lilla Kizlinger, born in Budapest, is a film director and actress. She began her studies at the University of Theatre and Film Arts Budapest (SZFE) in 2019 until the government forcibly changed the school's model. With ‘Forest - I See You Everywhere’, she received the Silver Bear for Best Supporting Actress at the 2021 Berlinale.
   
• Mário Drgoňa, is a dramaturge at the Slovak National Theatre and translator from English. He studied theatre dramaturgy and theatre production at the Academy of Performing Arts. During his studies he worked as a guest dramaturge and assistant director at several Slovak and Czech theatres. He founded and directs the theatre festival Fokus - Pokus.
   
• Robert Misik is a journalist and non-fiction author. He works as a curator, theatre maker and dramaturge, including for the Wiener Prozesse as part of the Festwochen. He has received numerous awards, such as the 2019 prize for economic journalism from the John Maynard Keynes Society and the 2020 Bruno Kreisky Prize for the political book for ‘Die falschen Freunde der einfachen Leute’: most recently published in 2023 was ‘Politik von Unten. How the comeback of social democracy can succeed’ published by Picus Verlag in 2023
   

Matthias Seier was born in Münsterland. Studied cultural studies, literature and sociology in Dortmund and Athens. From 2014 dramaturgy assistant at Schauspiel Dortmund, from 2018 to 2020 permanent dramaturge. Since 2020 dramaturge at the Volkstheater Wien; there he organised the three-day festival THE NEW NORMAL together with Christoph Gurk in 2021 and the themed weekend TIEFENBOHRUNG about post-fossil narratives with Calle Fuhr in February 2023. Further work as a dramaturge and author at Schauspielhaus Hamburg and Volksbühne Berlin. His productions DAS INTERNAT (directed by Ersan Mondtag, 2018) and humanistää! based on Ernst Jandl (directed by Claudia Bauer, 2022) were both invited to the Berlin Theatertreffen. In the critics' survey conducted by the trade magazine Theater heute, his dramaturgy for humanistää! was voted the best dramaturgy of the 21/22 season with five nominations.

Programme

Fri, 25 October, 7:00 pm im Literaturhaus Wien
Nazis & Goldmund
Right-wing extremist election programmes – deconstruction of the ‘Volkskanzler’

Performance

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.

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 

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.

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.