What were the characteristics of the 1990s for (young) artists, during the 1990s? It was a time of upheaval in Europe, the iron curtain fell and the Cold War was over. Shortly before this, in 1988, I made a kind of important gesture–as an artwork, when I came to Berlin for the very first time, having been invited by a gallery in Kreuzberg. I decided to enter the town from East Berlin, to be able to grasp the meaning about where I find myself now. I made a work about the Berlin Wall: a little boy from the couple that hosted me, dug and buried small iron balls in the ground along the Berlin wall with the assistance of his parents. The boy liked my steel-balls which had been installed as a line at the opening of that gallery, and he wanted to pluck them off the floor. A year later the wall fell, and shortly after this the Iron Curtain fell. My "wall piece" was called ”Setzung B.15/07/89” (Settlement) and was shown later in Vienna (as a silkscreen on the wall).

Anyway, Vienna moved closer to the heart of the international developments and became the focal point of a European cultural scene that was just opening up to the East. In 1995, Georg Schöllhammer and Hedwig Saxenhuber from Vienna started a new magazine, Springer. As researchers and curators they were engaged in issues of urban and cultural transformation, focusing on Central and Eastern Europe. Some might know the institution "Kulturkontakt Austria" in Vienna–-recently, I met Annemarie Türk again, who celebrated with a nice laudation the Ukrainian poet and Kramer-price winner, Tanja Maljartschuk. When we started to invite East European artists to Vienna, Mrs. Türk was our important partner.

In 1989, the Kultur Kontakt Austria association began its operations as an intermediary between artists, cultural institutions and companies as one of the first European institutions which actively promoted culture in the former East Bloc countries. Similar to the city of Graz, which from the beginning and to this day has established institutions like Kulturvermittlung Steiermark that would provide residencies for artists from the Balkans and from Southeast Europe. I will have an exhibition next week in Graz and my involved co-artists from Belgrade have benefited from a similar artist-in-residence programs.

Concerning my own biography, during the 1990s it is a matter of fact that every year there were some events going on with or in the East that I was inspired by. Together with my students at the University of Applied arts Vienna, to whom in 1993 I handed over my invitation for the gallery ON in Poznan, we made an exhibition as a semester-work and managed to print a catalog. In 1997, I received a grant from our Ministry and could choose between Chicago and Kraków for a four- month studio: I took the latter and experienced Kraków.

No man is an island, in fact. But some places become islands for a certain time, such as Plasy / or in my caseI was born in Styria--the Schwarzenberg’sche Meierei in Scheifling, beneath the ruins of the castle Schrattenberg, which started to operate in the 1990s.

Meanwhile the project got the name "Hotel Pupik." A place off the center, two buildings, originally a former stable and farmhouse, was offered by Karel Schwarzenberg, later the Czech minister of foreign affairs in Prague. His noble family has a castle in the area, in Murau, and owns forests and land in Styria. The summer symposiums were initiated as an art-association by Heimo Wallner, Uli Vonbank-Schedler and others. Meanwhile it started a residency program for artists from abroad and was always open to musicians as well. It is still active, co-organized by a younger collective, among them the daughter of Heimo Johanna.

According to Heimo Wallner the word “Pupík” was a quote from Marian Palla and means "navel" in Czech. I met Palla as a resident artist at the Schrattenberg Symposium (Hammerschlag 1991). There were mainly Czech and Slovak artists invited, recommended by Jozef Cseres and at the time Czechoslovakia was still one land. Thus, Heimo was an Austrian pioneer and very early on invited our East European colleagues.

These were exciting years. Speaking of connections, Plasy-Schrattenberg and vice versa: it was actually Heimo who introduced me to the Hermit initiator, Miloš Vojtěchovský. Schrattenberg became a place to visit every summer. There the first Intermedia Symposia had picked up speed, and now encompassed the sonic, the cinematic, and the digital arts. My first encounter with Phill Niblock was there, and therefore, it became something unforgettable for me.

Through Miloš, I participated in Plasy three times. The first time, I met the American musician and visual artist, Michael Delia, who still likes to cook food à la Napoli for his “Hermit friends.” Just recently, he painted my portrait as part of his “Friends” series. Florence Neal from New York was a participant in the discourse on documentation of the previous Hermit Symposia. She, in turn, brought me and others from the Hermit circuit (such as Martin Zet) to her Kentler Drawing Space in Brooklyn for solo exhibitions, and mine was there in 1998. After that, I went directly to Niblock’s Experimental Intermedia Foundation for a video presentation, first in New York and a year later in Ghent, Belgium.

Let me conclude. While showing a video from 1997, Italy è tutt’uno / it’s all one, that was presented on occasion of an OSMOSI Symposium of our Italian group, with music by Rajesh Mehta, whom I met while performing in Plasy. Such a symposium is a treasure trove of future activities. It was not unlike an art academy, more flexible and diverse, cross-generational, and anti-hierarchical, and also more chaotic. I have taught at art academies and have also co-founded artist groups. Such a symposium means a quality of togetherness and experience of performances, it remains sensually amplified through the echoes of the individuals. There is a mutuality in showing off to each other, of free experimenting, of observing, of arguing and, importantly, of eating and drinking together.

The nodes of networking since the mid-1990s, whether Schrattenberg (Hotel Pupik), Plasy (Hermit Foundation), New York (Experimental Intermedia), or Milan (O-Artoteca)—the latter through Sara Serighelli, from the Italy-network--share a common spirit: such strong, often very impressive places are connected with concrete people and their teams who are also always supportive and fundamentally non-competitive. Experimental in attitude, informed, trans-national, curious, cooperative, participative.  Serving food for mind, body and networking. They should be seen as culturally essential and therefore should be supported, just like museums or galleries are. Unlike such institutions, they are not a governmental or private sector container for secured art, where cash flows, and curated discourse and public outreach can attract large audiences and introduce them to culture.

It is a different matter with the anarchic power of the kind of symposia I mentioned, which are often justifiably considered legendary. They are gathering best minds. Even if they get tired after a decade, or sooner, and their funding dries up, they nevertheless will stand the test of time. And the best example of this was the Hermit Foundation.