What were the characteristics of the 1990ies for (young) artists, during the 90ies?

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 work, when I came to Berlin for the very first time being invited by a gallery in Kreuzberg. I decided to enter the town from the East Berlin, to  be able to grasp a 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 into 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 from 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” 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 an European cultural scene that was just opening towards the East. In 1995 Georg Schöllhammer and Hedwig Saxenhuber from Vienna started new magazine Springer. As researchers and curators they were since then 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 laudatio the Ukrainian poet and Kramer-price winner, Tanja Maljartschuk. Mrs. Türk was our important partner, when we had invited East European artists.

In 1989, the KulturKontakt 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 ex East Block countries. Similar to the city of Graz, which from the beginning and up to now has established institutions like Kulturvermittlung Steiermark, that would provide art residencies for artists from Balkan and from Southeast Europe.  I’ll have an exhibition next week in Graz and my involved co-artists from Belgrade had benefited from similar artist in residency programs.

Concerning my own biography during the 1990ies it is a matter of fact that every year there were some events going on with or in East, I became inspired with. Together with my students at University of Applied arts Vienna, to whom in 1993 I handed over my invitation for gallery ON in Poznan. They made an exhibition there as a semester-work and we managed  to print a catalog. In 1997 I received a grant and could choose between Chicago and Kraków for 4 months - Studio, offered by our Ministry: I took the latter and experienced Kraków.

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

Meanwhile the project got name "Hotel Pupik". A place off the center, two buildings, originally a former stable and farmhouse, was offered by Karel Schwarzenberg, the later foreign minister 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 entered 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 “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. Czechoslovakia was still one land then. Thus, Heimo was an Austrian pioneer and very early 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 Intermedial 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, became something unforgettable.

Through Miloš, I participated in Plasy three times. The first time, I met the musician and visual artist Michael Delia from the USA 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 a solo exhibition, 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 on occasion of an OSMOSI Symposium of our Italian group, with music by Rajesh Mehta, who I met 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, also more chaotic. I have taught at art academies and have also co-founded artist groups. Such a symposium means quality of togetherness and experience of performances, it remains sensually amplified in 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 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, curated discourse and public outreach can attract large audiences and introduce them to culture.

It is a different matter with the anarchic power for 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. The best example of this was as well the Hermit Foundation.