Graz Museum's exhibition Schloßberg-Utopien depicted the evolution of the use of the rock, around which Grazers first organized. First as a hill for materials, later a fortress against Napoleonic troops, then dismantled under a treaty with Napoleon. During World War II tunnels were created to offer safety against Allied air raids, and had been envisioned as a subterranean spa, parking lot and entertainment center.
As a modest sign of appreciation, I invited Iris and her boyfriend to Cafe Promenade to formally close our collaboration. Unfortunately, it was closed for a holiday party, so we decided to ascend the Schloßberg. The first bar was completely booked, as was the second. As we ascended higher and higher, the air crisper and the period between words in our conversation more latent. In the most posh restaurant was at the top. We were given a table just near the large, almost panoramic window over the city. The floor plan felt like a 1960s, James Bond, open floor-pan, amorphous, slight tiering so tables further from the window could see over the window seats, but with renovations such as new lights and colors. We ordered a bottle of blaufränkische. Iris had the cheese plate, as the vegetarian options were limited. I had a fish soup and steak. This was the final realization of the Schloßberg.
The conversation quivered between Austria and the US, LA where Iris’s boyfriend had been working for the last year, and Graz. His distaste for LA, beaches and the superficiality of the conversation found in Santa Monica reminded me of the copy of “Moralia Minimal” that was included in Sofa68 at ESC, and the certainty that Adorno, like any person that lived in another country and saw the flaws, shortcomings, rarities, became dissatisfied not only with the foreign land, but heimat as well. It should be noted that Adorno died in Switzerland.
I had imagined the evening as a bookend, or a symbolic gesture of appreciation but walking down the Schloßberg I felt unsatiated. Not because the gesture had been misunderstood, or the symbol misread, but because I realized that actually didn’t want to formally “wrap things up” or express gratitude; I wanted closure. I wanted to hear her personal impact about this project from Iris. I wanted to hear that as it had been to me, for her this had been a journey. By Freiheitsplatz I realized that the voice I wanted to hear not mute not because she had witnessed this project from the informed and interested perspective of an activist–of a Grazer–but that this project was just another murmur in the multi-year endeavor called ‘a job.’ In coming to terms with how little this was, I realized also that I wanted my project to have a relation to the Murkraftwerk; I wanted the project to diminish it, make it smaller, make it only a part of a larger theme. I wanted my video to leave the Mur and see the entire struggle for trees, hydropower and clean water as just an example of the inevitable playing out, a microcosm in which characters were caricatures, words were dialogue and actions were structured into a narrative arc, enjoyed in the compressed duration of a festival film screening.
I was ready to leave.