Iris invited me to an event at ESC Median Kunst Labor that was guided by the director, Reni. ESC had commissioned British artist Kathy Hinde to create "Distant Skies: Pressure Waves," a series of large-scale origami birds, whose wings were animated by crude pistons, all hung in front of Hubble telescope images of the galaxy. Simplistically beautiful, the location in the windows provoked a window-display aesthetic one might find on Fifth Avenue. Hypnotized, I liked them.
In the front exhibition space, the collaborative work "Palimpsest" (with Daniel Skoglund) explored the different transliteration of data from drawings on the floor into sound, which are in turn used to manipulate video footage. What the visitor saw were machines that look like land-borne drones on the floor scribbling abstract designs on paper, a projection onto the machine and some nearby monitors. It reminded me of the drawings made by machines that that were popular a decade ago, back when that documentary of an elephant that could paint and whose paintings were selling made plebeians continue to ask the question "What is art?" These works don't ask this question, and for that, I'm thankful.
In the main exhibition space Hinde showed "Phase Transition," a series of three sculptures that converted data about global warming to heated lamps over ice, which, while melting dropped into a steel trough. Inadvertently, these created beautiful rust patterns in the bottom of the pan. Some audio was connected to these. As a trio of three or four of these systems, I'm not sure what the point of having more than one was, but the trend of visualizing data and reproducing it in different media is vaguely similar to the fascination of synaesthesia in the 19th Century, only the myth of the artist as neurologically unique and appreciating sensorial perception differently than most people is replaced with the myth that the artist is a mild genius who can send data that would be interpreted by one sense to a different medium to be interpreted by another sense.[1]
At ESC I met Vera, the new resident artist at Schaumbad.
Iris and the ESC gallery assistant, Fay, shortly debated the merits of artwork about climate change. During the discussion I sensed a history between these two young ladies. Later I learned that they had been students in an art history class together. Another nod toward small town dynamics.
Zihua and I went to the opening of Keyvin and saw only the closing of the event but he showed me the downstairs of the space, which functioned as a workshop or storage. The building was very old, and the basement, which required descending several narrow stone passageways, was unfinished, densely packed although the ceiling must have been 12 feet high.
We met Iris and Vera at Kork cafe near the University to see a performance by the Graz artist Stefan Schmitzer. His performance consisted of a drummer and keyboardist playing disjointed songs while Stefan read from publications by the right-leaning Austrian government. Although I didn't understand the reading because it was in German, I was impressed because by the space, which was a lively cafe with patrons enjoying beers and hanging out, while this avant gard performance occupied the place of what would be a bad open-mic (tucked into a corner, no cover fee, and people really being at the cafe to socialize, not to be entertained or see a performance) in a U.S. cafe. [2]
For the size of the population, Graz has a lot of cultural activities operating at an impressive level. While San Francisco has about 700,000 inhabitants (a few million if the greater San Francisco Area is included), at short of 300,000 people Graz and has many many more events, and higher quality of work, both on grounds of content and production value. The cultural institutions of Graz–Künstlerhaus KM, Grazer Kunstverein, and Kunsthaus Graz for contemporary art, mirror the role of San Francisco's Yerba Buena, or Berkeley's Pacific Art Museum. The Kunsthaus includes Camera Austria’s exhibition space; Camera Austria also produces a printed magazine. Graz has a plethora of smaller spaces, like Kunsthalle Graz and of course Schaumbad.
The Universalmuseum Joanneum is a massive complex of regional institutions that include natural history, artifacts, zoology, mineralogy, paleontology, folk culture and art. It actually includes Kunsthaus Graz within its network. Besides contemporary art, there are numerous religious museums and historic museums: GrazMuseum, Tramway Museum, Schloss Eggenberg (another Joanneum), Museum Der Wahrenmung, Schell Collection, Naturkundemuseum, Haus Der Arkitektur, Styrian Armoury, Palais Herberstein, a sculpture park and numerous historic and architectural sites. There are galleries, some high-end commercial, others more experimental with a non-profit model. The Diagonale film festival is an addition to the local, smaller cinemas that will screen Cannes and Berlinale programming.
By population, Graz is more appropriately compared to either Seattle or Portland, but by this metric, even the two American cities combined, there is no comparison with the cultural activity and level to Graz. The Henry Art Gallery, Seattle Art Museum, Seattle Asian Art Museum, and the Frye inadvertently collaborate toward fulfilling the void of institutional contemporary art in Seattle. However, their collections aren’t orientated to complement this mission and much of the floorpan is dedicated to landscape painters or German Romanticists, which influence your experience seeing newer works in adjacent galleries. As the relevance of art to the Millennial audience increasingly equates to revisioned histories of truth, power, sexuality, gender and representation–across media–institutions face the reality of evolving or closing their doors. And in the last 10 years there have been occasional, and thankfully an increasing frequency of shows of international repute in Seattle–Harun Farocki at the SAM and Carrie Mae Weems at the Henry to name a few–but every time I visit I'm reminded of the tremendous wealth of the city–the numerous corporations and billionaires (Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates)–and sorely surprised that only Paul Allen has seriously supported arts and culture. (Can the public visit Microsoft’s art collection?) Architecturally speaking, I prefer the facade of Experience Museum Project to Peter Cook's Kunsthaus Graz, but I've never seen an important or interesting show at the EMP, and the interior space is a tropical wine cellar: too warm to keep anything of value. Seattle has had some fledgling organizations that were promising–Western Bridge, 911 Media–but they couldn't gain the traction, years, and support needed to grow into a world class stature. The exception to this is the Seattle Sculpture Park. As a city that was the mythical center of 1990s music, Seattle could have positioned itself as a world destination for contemporary culture. Yet Seattle’s best cultural activities are found in house-show scene, cafes and restaurants.
Graz institutions achieve an international scope through introducing local and international practitioners in residencies, special exhibitions and programming with budgets. Notably, the majority of cultural institutions in Graz are headed by accomplished females. At least four of these institutional leaders were feminists artists involved in the magazine Eva & Co.
The Steirischer Herbst [1] is an important annual arts festival that been staged for over forty years. With an emphasis on new and avant-garde art, most media are included–music, films, installations, radio programs, theater, exhibitions–as well as programming for discussions and lectures. Seattle’s Bumbershoot would be a similar scale, though Bumbershoot emphasizes music and lasts only for Labor Day Weekend; Steirischer Herbst lasts for about a month.
CMRK is an evening of coordinated openings in Graz in which four institutions that support contemporary art–Camera Austria, Künstlerhaus KM, <roto> and Grazer Kunstverein–each have a reception for one hour, each occurring in succession. The event aims to connect the contemporary arts community of Graz s well as draws crowds from Vienna by offering a free shuttle bus between the two cities. [4]
The sector that I see missing most in Graz is a strong contemporary gallery district. There isn't a large, distinct arts neighborhood. And the few galleries that I visited were spread out around the city; the works were unimpressive. Here, Graz could learn from the model that Seattle developed with the Tashiro Kaplan Artist Lofts that function as anchor of the Seattle's gallery area or 49 Geary in San Francisco. [5]
In the context of connectivity to international producer, Steiermark has attracted international artists, writers, musicians, regularly through their residencies and commissions, exhibitions and talks. San Francisco's Headlands, nearby Djerassi, or Montalvo lack the exposure of residency that is located within a city and open to the public. Seattle's residency scene is small; local niche organization like, Jack Straw, mostly support local talent.
[1] ESC Medien Kunst Labor
https://esc.mur.at/de/projekt/distant-skies-pressure-waves
[2] Stefan Schmitzer
https://schmitzer.mur.at/
[3] CMRK
http://www.cmrk.org/k_eng.html
[4] Steirischer Herbst - Festival of New Art
http://2015.steirischerherbst.at/english/Festival
[5] Tashiro Kaplan Artist Lofts
http://tklofts.com/